


A Stand Against the General Opinion

by NoxianTaco



Category: League of Legends
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-12
Updated: 2015-08-06
Packaged: 2018-02-20 20:49:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 61,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2442701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoxianTaco/pseuds/NoxianTaco
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Darius is intoxicating for the same reasons he's infuriating: his insulting voice, his spiteful glare, his constantly visible attitude of stoic hatred for the world. Despising him is a dangerous addiction Garen has entertained since their very first quarter together, and a mishap during Garen's pledge ceremony causes this addiction to take an unexpectedly intimate turn. College AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The beginning takes place at Christmas but I promise that's not what the story is about.
> 
> Comments (including criticism) are always greatly appreciated. <3

Garen had inhaled enough artificial cinnamon scent to make him sick for a week. Either the department store employees had an inane amount of the fragrance circulating through the air vents, or he had sniffed that holiday candle a little too hard earlier, but he doubted that a single candle could pack that amount of punch. His headache was getting worse by the minute.

The _real_ reason behind this headache had started out as a sick feeling in his stomach and gradually morphed into a sense of inevitable dread. The more he thought about his impending fate, the more his mind wanted to reject it. He kept telling himself it was for the sake of the pledge. A one-time dare which wouldn’t follow him past his worst enemy’s doorstep on Christmas Eve.

But the more he thought about it, the closer he came to realizing that this was the type of action that would follow him throughout his college career. The last time he had talked to Darius was to chew him out for calling someone an imbecile, and every preceding conversation between them had occurred in a similar way. If Garen broke the cycle of seething antagonism here, the bastard would never let him live it down. Never. Or at least, not for the two and a half years remaining before graduation.

Two and a half years of suffering in return for entrance to Jarvan’s social fraternity. Was it worth it? Most definitely not. But he couldn’t let down his best friend - not after he had come this far already.

He only wished he had resisted rushing for one more quarter. The winter pledge was formulated in the sickly sweet spirit of Christmas: give a gift to your worst enemy. No gags, and no snarky comments. They would videotape him from the side while he did it; behavior that was anything less than cordial would disqualify him, or so they said. It was the stupidest pledge ceremony he had ever heard of, but apparently past years had proven it pretty hilarious, so they held it as tradition.

There had been no way to claim a different worst enemy because Jarvan shared too many classes with him. Jarvan witnessed their squabbles daily, and the glares they exchanged as though they were equally offended by the fact that they shared the same air. And Jarvan couldn’t keep his mouth shut to save his life, at least not when it came to silly things like these.

When Garen found his sister and her friends in the same candle aisle they had been in ten minutes ago, he couldn’t fathom how they were still smiling the way they were instead of puking. Maybe there were drugs mixed into the wax.

She caught him looking gloomy and dumbfounded at the end of the aisle, and asked, “Having any luck?”

“No,” he sighed. He hadn’t told her about the pledge. She was under the impression he was looking for something to give Xin, his roommate, and Katarina, who had been his homecoming date this year. She was a nice girl. Feisty, but in a nice way. She texted him daily but always disappeared mid-conversation because she was so busy with club activities. Every once in awhile she would appear on his doorstep, exhausted after soccer practice, promptly fuck him, and sleep there for a few hours before departing again at ungodly hours of the morning. But that was as far as their relationship went. The last time he had tried asking her what the hell all this was about, she had shut him up with a blowjob and marathon sex.

While Janna and Ezreal were discussing what ‘Summer Breeze’ _actually_ smelled like in the background, Lux approached him and put her finger to her chin. After a moment of thought, she took his arm and started walking.

“I’ve got just the thing.”

“What about…?” He gestured toward the duo in the candle aisle they were emigrating from.

“They’ll be fine. They can argue for ages.”

“What’s your idea, then?”

“A book and some aftershave. It’s a typical guys gift, you can’t go wrong,” she replied with a confident smile. Garen considered giving the aforementioned objects to Darius as opposed to Xin, and figured they would do, if only because he didn’t have any better ideas. “And for Kat…”

He noticed that they were heading into the lingerie section, and stopped in his tracks.

“Luxanna, no.”

“Oh, come on! What you two have going is pathetic. You need to show her that you’re serious.”

“Sexy lingerie is hardly a good way to tell someone you want more out of her than sex.”

“Silly,” she responded nonchalantly as she picked up a box containing a racy red lingerie set, complete with bra, lacy boyshorts, garter belt, stockings, and a short silk nightrobe. “Giving an expensive gift like this sends a completely different message.”

“What message?”

He would have followed up with, ‘I want to dress you up, my sex kitten?’ if he wouldn’t have felt completely obscene afterward.

“That you like her enough to spoil her.”

She placed the lid on the box, which was tacky cardboard and would need to be re-wrapped, and placed it in his reluctant arms. He wanted to tell Lux that he didn’t actually want to spoil Katarina; he just wanted to know why she insisted on maintaining a sexual relationship with him when they had never verbally discussed anything beyond friendship, and if he was getting some free stimulation along the way, then so be it.

“Lux-”

“No buts. Trust me. She’ll like it.”

And with that, she headed toward the Christmas section containing gifts especially for men.

There was no point in arguing once Luxanna Crownguard had made up her mind. Garen looked down at the box and shrugged.

What’s the worst that could happen?

* * *

It was the typical college apartment. Top floor of a two-story complex, curtains drawn, completely unadorned porch area. This one didn’t have an iota of holiday spirit. Not a wreath, or a string of lights inside the front window. Nothing.

The fraternity had found the address for him and driven him here. Jarvan and a couple of other fraternity brothers were hiding in the bushes below with a tripod, snickering to each other while causing a completely unreasonable amount of leaf-rustling. He couldn’t imagine that they would get a great angle on the shot, but they were certainly close enough to hear everything - and record Garen’s embarrassment for all of posterity.

He cleared his throat loudly, casting a warning glance their way. Once they had quieted down long enough to give him a thumbs up, he took a miserable breath and knocked on the door.

When Darius opened it, he was dressed in a grey wifebeater, dark sweatpants, and his typical stone-carved expression of disgust. If Garen wasn’t mistaken, Christmas Eve had him feeling more spiteful and not the other way around. He didn’t say a word. He glanced between Garen and the gift-wrapped box in Garen’s hands as if to say, _Are you fucking kidding me?_

“Merry Christmas,” Garen monotoned, holding out the box.

“What the hell is this?”

_What the hell does it look like?_

“A Christmas present,” Garen answered flatly, biting back every impulse he had to punch this asshole in the face right here and now, since there weren’t any school authorities around to expel them. Unfortunately, he had a pledge to uphold.

“What is it, a time bomb?”

_If it were up to me it would be._

“No.” He shoved the box out in front of him. “Just take it.”

Darius did. “I hope you’re not expecting anything back. The only thing I have for you is a door.”

“I-”

The door slammed in his face, and suddenly he got the joke.

Jarvan and the others started guffawing, but Garen couldn’t see what was so funny about making a complete fool out of yourself in front of the one person you wished you didn’t have to. That was the point of these pledge ceremonies, he supposed. To prove that the fraternity meant more to you than your honor - which it really didn’t, in Garen’s case.

He descended the staircase to be greeted by a barrage of bro-hugs and back-pattings.

“Congratulations, you’re an official member of Phi Kappa Tau!”

“That wasn’t so bad, was it? The guy looked miserable. You did a good deed.”

Garen tried to think of it that way, but it was hard to imagine that there was anything more to Darius than a deep-seated hatred of all mankind. You can’t change a person like that, he figured. So he smiled and tried to forget the impending humiliation as they walked back to the car to attend the afterparty.

* * *

Lux was at the door bright and early the next morning to drive them back home for Christmas. She lectured him all the way there for having a hangover, which only made it worse rather than better, and knocked him in the head on their parents’ front porch only to greet the pair with sugarsweet enthusiasm when they opened the door.

Sometimes he thought that she deserved to be the favorite, what with her impeccable manners and her natural proficiency in everything the Crownguards considered admirable. They were the old-fashioned type; they had raised their children to sit up straight and keep their elbows off the table since the day they were old enough to sit in a proper dining chair. Even so, Garen would come home with his knees covered in mud while Lux sat in the parlor reading, and Garen had a vague interest in politics while Lux could out-talk him any day, and _she_ was studying to become a physicist.

She was less than perfect, but they didn’t know that. From the favorable manner with which she responded to gifts of teddy bears and unflattering spring dresses, they would have never been able to guess the things she wore out to nightclubs, or the way she acted when things didn’t go her way. She had a gift for sociability, while Garen had a tendency to wear his heart out on his sleeve whether he wanted to or not.

They gave him a hi-tech sports watch and several sets of businesswear, which would be useful when he started seriously working towards a career in political science. He wasn’t sure yet exactly what he wanted to do. Jarvan had plans to run for the presidency, and he consistently urged Garen to work with him as his right-hand man (and maybe one day, vice-president).

All in all, it was a pleasant day, and his hangover was gone by the end of the feast they called Christmas brunch. Relatives came and went, and he practiced asking open-ended questions, actually getting to know the people that he would previously forget every year. Turns out his elder cousin had just become mayor where he lived. He spent a lot of time talking to said cousin about what it took to be a politician, and about how stupid so many of the office’s predecessors were.

He arrived home late the next evening to a pleasantly empty apartment. Xin must have still been with relatives. Just as his head hit the pillow, his phone buzzed.

It was the last person he had expected to ever receive a text from, let alone a friendly one. The only reason they had each other’s numbers was because they had been grouped together for a project in their first quarter of college, before they knew how much they hated each other. It had been an oral presentation. Darius had done zero of the preparation work, but when presentation day came, he grabbed the stage first and performed the best presentation of the day, which boiled Garen’s blood because not only had he essentially taken credit for the entire group’s work, but because he had proven just how much better at this he already was than everyone else. The worst part was that when he sat back down afterward, he resumed his usual routine of glaring at everyone in unamused silence, retaining not a scrap of the passionate and well-versed presenter he had left behind in the front of the classroom. It didn’t make any sense.

That had been the beginning of a long and tempestuous rivalry which, Garen admitted, had been initiated by himself the day he was walking behind Darius and coughed ‘asshole’ loudly enough for the entire hallway to hear.

 _Hello,_ the text said. Garen wasn’t going to answer, until another one came shortly afterward.

_Did you have a pleasant Christmas?_

_Why do you care?_

_Just wondering._

_Yes, I did._

When an answer didn’t come for several minutes, he got up and made herbal tea, which was his usual solution for being unable to sleep. He had been baffled into discomfort, and despite how little he tried to convince himself he cared, he wanted to know why he was suddenly receiving texts from someone who hadn’t texted him in more than a year, at midnight two days after Christmas.

It was the stupid gift.

When he came back with a warm mug and a mind full of irritation, another text was waiting.

_Mine sucked, thanks for asking._

_I didn’t ask._

And that was the end of the conversation. He went to sleep wondering why the bastard thought he cared whether he had a good Christmas or not. Apparently, nothing says affection like aftershave and a book titled _How To Be a Man._

He thought it sounded more like an insult than a gift, coming from him.

* * *

The day before school came back into session, Katarina arrived at his apartment armed with her unwrapped gift box and murderous intent in her eyes. She had him up against the wall by his collar in seconds, not bothering to close the door behind her. If he remembered right, she had gone home for the holidays as well and had just returned today.

“What the hell is this supposed to mean?” she snarled, holding up the closed box in her left hand.

Shit. She didn’t like it.

“It was, uh, Lux’s idea…”

“Are you serious? You think you can pass the blame off on your sister for a stupid idea like this?!”

He was lost for words as she glared at him, throwing the box to the floor, where the lid came askew and wrapping tissue flew out.

“Is this your way of coming out of the closet, or did you just want to insult me?”

“What?” he responded in confusion, glancing downward at the box. It was barely open, but he thought he could see the end of a bottle inside. A bottle of…aftershave.

“Oh, god,” he breathed.

Lux had done the wrapping for him, knowing how likely he was to screw it up with his ‘huge barbarian hands’. She must have gotten the gifts mixed up on accident. Which meant that Darius had the lingerie.

He had given Darius a box of sexy lingerie on Christmas Eve.

He felt like he was going to throw up.

“Oh, god,” he repeated, taking a deep breath in.

“What?” Katarina retorted, though her grip on his collar loosened. “Spit it out.”

“You have the wrong gift. I’m so sorry, Katarina. I-”

 _“Seriously?!”_ she snapped, and he was shoved against the wall again with a surprising amount of force. “You think you can get away with this by calling it an accident?! It’s just one excuse after another. I had no idea you were so _despicable._ Consider yourself dead to me.”

“Katarina, please allow me to explain!” he called out to her, but she was storming down the walkway with no intentions of ever coming back again. He would likely only earn himself a black eye if he tried to follow her before she calmed down. It felt horrible, though.

This entire situation felt horrible.

His roommate’s voice came floating in from the other room. “Is everything alright?”

Xin was peeking around the corner with a bewildered look on his face. He was a foreign exchange student, so he didn’t talk much, but when he did talk he made himself out to be nothing but considerate.

“Not quite,” he responded glumly, picking the dented box up off the floor. Upon further inspection, it did, indeed, contain a bottle of aftershave and Glenn O’Brien’s comedic guidelines on how to be a man. He didn’t want to imagine the look on Katarina’s face when she had opened it, nor did he want to imagine how she must have felt for the remainder of the holidays.

“I need to fix this.”

“Let me know if there’s anything I can do,” Xin said, staring at Garen perplexedly for a moment before moving to retreat back into his room.

“Hey, Xin.”

“Yes?”

Garen placed the lid on the box, straightened it out as best he could, and walked over to hand it to the timid young man. “Merry Christmas.”

“Thank you, Garen,” came the overly zealous response, along with a smile wider than Garen had seen all quarter. Xin made a small bow before closing the door.

 _What a good guy,_ he thought.

Unlike the intolerable asswad he got in his car to go visit and offer an explanation to, who must have currently believed he was asking for some sort of sick, twisted booty call.

What a mess.

* * *

Darius wasn’t glaring when he opened the door, dressed in a pair of black jeans and a wifebeater one shade darker than the last. He was almost smiling. Almost.

“You came,” he said.

“I’m here to offer an apology,” Garen replied, but before he could continue, Darius had stepped aside for him, revealing a living room littered carelessly in clothes and old dishes.

“Come in.”

“I’d rather not.”

“Come in,” he repeated, and the sharp edge had returned to his voice.

Garen hesitated before stepping inside. The stale smell he was certain he would have been greeted with was disguised by a powerful air freshener the scent of mangoes. The place - not surprisingly - looked like a pigsty, but smelled like a tropical paradise.

“I’m not here to stay. I just wanted to explain that-”

Darius closed the door with an obnoxious amount of force and walked past him down the hallway. It seemed that he had no intentions of listening to whatever Garen had to say, and that wouldn’t do.

“Darius,” Garen remarked firmly, not moving from where he stood. He received no answer. Darius had presumably gone inside his room; he had invited Garen inside only to ignore the fact of his existence.

Suddenly Garen remembered with certainty why he hated this guy so much, and blatant disregard for others was only one of the reasons.

He stormed down the hallway to the open doorway he had watched Darius walk through, all the while grumbling, “Darius, the gift I gave you-”

Upon reaching the doorway he crashed into the bulk of man carrying the very gift he spoke of, still arranged neatly in its box. “This? I was under the impression you wanted me to wear it for you.”

“I have no such intentions.”

“Good, because you’re going to wear it for me.”

“What?”

He shoved the package into Garen’s chest as though his instructions were clear as day and equally acceptable, narrowing his eyes in challenge. The two of them were almost the same height, but right now Darius looked taller, and his obvious physical capability was accentuated by his choice of shirt. To be honest, Garen wasn’t sure which one of them would win in a fight. Both of them spent half their free time at the gym and the other half participating in relatively violent club sports, but Garen supposed that having won first place in the Regional MMA Tournament gave the other man an advantage.

“I’m not putting that on,” Garen said scathingly, his fists clenching by his sides. “I’m not sure why you would want me to in the first place, douchebag.”

“You wouldn’t want the entire school knowing you gave me lingerie for Christmas, right? I’m sure you know my brother. He’s got a pretty big mouth.”

“You have a brother? Gee, I feel bad for him.”

“His name is Draven.”

Garen stared at him in disbelief. The Draven he was thinking of had enrolled as a freshman this fall and was already notorious schoolwide for pranks and womanizing. The funny part about those types of people was that they were popular. Popular enough to spread a rumor around the entire campus in the course of a day.

“You wouldn’t,” Garen growled through gritted teeth, but he already knew the answer, and a deep sense of dread was sinking down through his midsection. It was too late now to take back the mistake. How could he have expected someone like Darius to do anything with this situation but evil?

“I gave you the wrong gift,” he muttered sheepishly.

“Do you think the greedy ears of ten thousand university students care about the details?”

“No,” he responded, taking the box with an angry jerk.

“The bathroom is down that way,” Darius informed him nonchalantly, pushing past to return to the living room, where he splayed himself comfortably out on the couch and turned the TV on.

For a moment Garen hesitated there in the hallway, and he was about to ask _why_ when he grasped the obvious answer: humiliation, pure and simple. He thought the pledge ceremony had been bad. That was nothing compared to this.

He wanted to blame Lux, but it wasn’t her fault. Not really. People made mistakes. It was Garen who had decided to fuel this thread of hatred for the past year and a half. Darius was undeniably the most impolite, self-serving, disheartening isle of desolation Garen had ever met, but that didn’t mean he had to let it affect him. He could have accepted from the start that someone this loathsome actually existed, instead of doing everything he could to try to prove something otherwise, to find some sort of reason behind it.

After all this time he still hadn’t found a reason. Maybe it was time to get this over with and then give up.

He walked to the bathroom, closed the door, and glared at himself in the mirror, trying to imagine beforehand what he would look like in women’s lingerie. He was a 225-pound hunk of muscle with a scar on his lower abdomen and a perfect side-sweep he was a little too proud of. This lingerie was meant to fit on a woman half his size. His balls were aching already.

The bottoms fit, although the seams were ready to burst. The garter belt didn’t reach past his thighs, so he scrapped it along with the stockings, and he didn’t even bother with the bra. He was wearing lacy red underwear that cut off his dick’s circulation and a matching short-sleeved silk nightrobe that, fortunately, had been designed loose-fitting, so on him it was extremely snug and fell to his upper thighs.

He left his clothes in the corner of the bathroom floor and emerged red-faced and regretting his own existence. Darius was watching _Stargate: Atlantis._ He must have decided he was more comfortable without a shirt on, because it was draped haphazardly over the backrest, and he had a can of beer in his hand. No wonder the place was such a mess.

“I’m...dressed,” Garen muttered from behind the couch, but Darius didn’t turn around to look. He simply raised his free hand and beckoned, so Garen trudged around to the front. “What the hell do you want from me?”

Darius sat up, placed his beer on the side table, and grabbed the front of the nightrobe. An ordinary person wouldn’t have been able to break Garen’s balance, but this man did it like it was nothing, and he did it out of nowhere, because half a second before he yanked his eyes had been glued to the television screen.

When Garen fell into his lap, their eyes met, and perhaps that was the only reason he didn’t throw a punch right then and there: he saw something other than the cold, lifeless gaze he had seen for the past year and a half. He saw calm scrutiny. He saw the hint of a smile, and the mischievous inklings of some sort of scheme.

It occurred to him that it couldn’t be a good scheme, especially with the position that they were in, one on top of the other and Darius with a fistful of red silk that was too tight not to start slipping off of Garen’s shoulders. He tried to pull away, but Darius’s grip was strong, and suddenly he was under another person’s physical control for the first time since he’d started working out in middle school. Even when he grabbed the huge fist and dug his fingernails in, the guy didn’t appear to feel a thing. If he tried harder he could get away, but in this unstable position that would only make him fall further, and touching skin was the last thing he wanted.

“Let me go,” Garen said, one scathing word after another.

“No,” Darius replied simply, tightening his grip on the silk rather than loosening it. They were inches apart.

“Darius-”

“You’re blushing,” he remarked with a smirk. “Who was it for?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The gift. Who was it meant for?”

“That’s none of your goddamn business.”

“It is, unless you want my brother to talk.”

“Katarina.”

“I know her. She was one of Draven’s group leaders at new student orientation. He fucked her afterward.”

It was by impulse that his fist flew forward, but Darius cocked his head to the side so that it landed harmlessly in the couch cushions. That, he honestly hadn’t expected.

“Is that true, or are you just saying it to piss me off?”

“You decide,” Darius responded calmly. “Whatever I tell you won’t matter, because you already have a pre-conceived idea of me as some sort of devilspawn.”

“You gave me the evidence yourself.”

Darius gave him a look as if to say, ‘try me’.

“Not a single action you take is meant to benefit anyone but yourself. For the past year and a half I’ve watched you do whatever it takes to get a good grade, yet you walk into class every day with a storm-cloud hanging over your head. When people try to talk to you, you unfailingly find ways to insult them. You steal unclaimed coffee from the Starbucks counter and pocket money that people drop. Even now, you’re holding me here against my will, blackmailing me because I made an honest mistake.”

Garen expected retaliation, as would be the typical response of an enemy being called out for their offenses. Argument, denial, physical recoil, anything. Instead, Darius unflinchingly remarked, “You’ve paid a lot of attention to me, haven’t you?”

Either he actually accepted the blatant social inadequacies of his own behavior, or he hadn’t been listening to Garen at all.

It was true, though. Garen had devoted a considerable portion of the time he spent in Darius’s presence since the oral presentation directing hatred through his eyesockets, and another portion of his time at home complaining about his countless misdemeanors to Lux. He wasn’t the type to complain, and she knew that. Darius was the only person vile enough to complain about.

“They say that in order to hate someone, you have to love them first,” Darius said, and Garen honestly couldn’t tell whether he was joking or not. He had withdrawn his fist and was attempting to pry the guy’s fingers apart, to no avail. This stupidly close proximity was getting on his last nerves. He could smell the beer on his breath, and it didn’t mix well with tropical mangoes.

“You’re dreaming if you think I want anything more from you than justice for twenty years’ worth of shit,” Garen spat back.

“Are you sure it’s the injustice that makes you so angry? The stolen three-dollar coffees, the twenty that some rich kid dropped?” Darius yanked him another inch closer, and suddenly he was aware of a hand on his waist. “Or is it the fact that I’ve outshone you since our very first quarter?”

“It’s the fact that you’re a dishonest bully that this world would do better without.”

He chuckled humorlessly. “You sound like my nonexistent mother.”

Just like that, Garen had happened upon an inkling of a reason, but before he could delve any further, Darius continued. “Look at yourself, Garen. Where do you think this situation leads?”

He looked at himself as though he were a witness rather than a participant. He was sitting on top of a shirtless musclehead while dressed in overtight Christmas lingerie, half of which was already falling off. Darius had no intentions of letting him walk around for awhile and leave. Next he would ask for him to get on his knees, and after that…

Darius let go and told him to sit down on the couch.

“What?”

“You heard me.”

Garen sat, and Darius knelt down between his knees.

“I’ll tell you a secret,” he said, pulling loose the tie that held the nightrobe together at the waist. “I’ve found you attractive since day one. You’re the one who chose to hate me.”

“I’m straight,” Garen responded, shocked and relieved but a little too distressed to express either. Unfortunately, the right kind of physical touch was all it took to make the body react, and as Darius rubbed Garen winced from the pain of increasingly constrictive fabric against a hardening cock. “Stop it.”

“No.”

“This is rape.”

“Let me blow you, or the whole school will find out that you blew me.”

“Shit,” he uttered, half in response to the statement, and half in response to the warm mouth he felt against the outside of the fabric, which was thin enough to feel invisible but had all the elastic power to pinch harder by the second. He laid his head back against the couch, trying to imagine that it was anyone but who it was.

One time. He just had to endure one time, and then this would all be over.

But it wasn’t so much endurance as it was impatience, as soon as the overtight panties were pushed down his hips and the pain in his groin was replaced by a hot, wet mask of pleasure.

He was moving, slowly at first, and then quickly, and all Garen could remember thinking was that this guy wasn’t an amateur, god, he knew exactly where to put his tongue and where to place his fingers, at what rate to speed up and just when to slow down and start teasing again before he came. It lasted four minutes that felt like forty, and that was only because Darius made it so he would last that long.

He wiped what remained on his lips with the back of his hand, and then sat down beside Garen, sideways against the armrest. “You can leave now, but if you want more where that came from…”

Garen turned his head and glared at him. “I can’t _believe_ you.”

He was smiling, his massive arms spread out across the arm and backrest, comfortable as could be. He retorted, “What is there not to believe?”

There was too much on Garen’s mind for him to come up with a smart-aleck answer, so he pulled the panties up, walked quickly to the bathroom, and changed, leaving half of the lingerie in the sink and the other half on the floor to match the rest of the home’s organization. As he left the apartment, Darius didn’t even glance at him. He was back to watching what, if Garen remembered right, was the season finale.


	2. Chapter 2

When Garen entered his first discussion section of spring quarter, Darius was sitting there in the front row, his head resting sideways on his hand and his eyes occupied by the same dull glare that had been his standard for the past year. The seats directly around him remained empty. Garen positioned himself in the furthest possible location from Darius, not realizing until Jarvan poked him in the back that he hadn’t acknowledged any of the room’s other occupants. It had been a classroom full of empty faces and a single man.

“Hey,” Jarvan said, peeking around his shoulder. “Is it just me or is your face unusually red?”

“Shut up,” he retorted.

“Wake up on the wrong side of the bed, my friend?”

“I’m just tired.”

In fact, Garen had woken up on top of raging hard-on, and he was still trying to convince himself that he was remembering his dreams wrong.

“We’re all tired. Too much Christmas turkey, I suppose. Look at Quinn.”

Garen did. She was passed out on top of her desk and class hadn’t even started yet. It brought an amused smile to his face, which faded the moment the professor spoke and his gaze passed once more over the dark-haired male in the front row.

One time, he had told himself, and one time it had been. Yet he hadn’t gone a minute since without remembering it, regretting it, wanting it, regretting wanting it, and cursing himself for being such a goddamn idiot. It had occurred to him during the sleepless night after the incident that if Darius really wanted to, he could easily decide to spread any rumor regardless of the deal they had made. He wasn’t the type to keep his word. Garen was practically holding his breath, waiting for someone next to him to lean over and whisper, _Is it true that you and Darius…you know?_

But no one paid any more attention to him that class than they had last quarter, and for the first time _he_ paid attention to Darius with something other than mindless hatred in his thoughts. He kept remembering what it had felt like - not what it _looked_ like, since he hadn’t been looking - but the simultaneous bliss and mental turmoil, the humiliation that had turned to confusion, and finally led to an entire change of heart.

He had been shocked into seeing more than a single-minded brute; someone whose sole motivation was to demean others wouldn’t have gotten on his knees for someone else. Not unless it was part of a larger plan, but Garen doubted that. Giving blowjobs to another guy wasn’t a casual thing, especially for someone who looked and acted like Darius did.

It had to mean something.

_I’ve found you attractive since day one. You’re the one who chose to hate me._

The answer was there in those words, but it didn’t make any sense to Garen, so he spent that class period trying to decipher a declaration that was already crystal clear.

Peace was kept, for a change, until he walked outside and saw Katarina chatting with Darius, recently emerged from a nearby class. He wasn’t sure if Darius was actually more acquainted with her than he had let on or if Katarina just wanted to befriend him because Garen hated him, but either way, he didn’t like it.

There was no point in getting himself involved, so he and Jarvan kept walking, at least until he walked close enough to hear Darius saying, “You should’ve seen what he got _me_ for Christmas.”

He panicked, and purposely shoved his shoulder into Darius as he walked past to disrupt the conversation. He couldn’t have word getting out, he absolutely _couldn’t_ , especially to Katarina.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “I couldn’t see you with your enormous ego blocking the way.”

Despite his declaration being directed at the man beside her, Kat was the first to answer. She crossed her arms, glaring at him. “He didn’t do anything to you, so what’s your problem, douchebag?”

 _As a matter of fact, he_ did _do something to me._

“I told you, Katarina, that was an accident-”

“She doesn’t want to hear it, Crownguard,” Darius said, and Garen couldn’t help but notice that last night he’d addressed him by his first name instead. “Get lost.”

Just as he was about to raise his fist, he felt a hand on his shoulder. Jarvan didn’t have to say anything to get his message across. This was not the time or place for a fight.

As he swallowed his anger and turned away, he felt Darius lean close to him for a split second, close enough to mutter beside his ear, “If you have a problem, feel free to address it with me later.”

And a moment later, at normal distance and audible volume, “By the way, I was talking about my _brother’s_ Christmas present.”

Then his friend had a firm grip on his arm and they were paces away, and his face was flushed all over again. There was no way Jarvan would have missed what had happened, or be able to look over his current expression of flustered indignation without thinking twice. He released Garen’s arm and cast him a questioning look. “What did you do to piss off Katarina?”

Relief washed over him, at least until the next question was asked.

“And why has Darius got your knickers in such an especially tight bunch?”

In his frustration, he was half-tempted to blurt out, _‘Because he pulled them down and sucked my dick last night.’_

But he didn’t think Jarvan would believe him anyhow, so he ignored the second question and answered the first. “I gave her the wrong gift and she doesn’t believe me.”

“When you walked into class you stood in front of the door for a good second just glaring at him, and your face turned red. About the same shade as it is right now,” Jarvan explained matter-of-factly, smiling. “What exactly was it that he whispered in your ear?”

Garen stopped dead in the middle of the walkway, inhaling deep breaths.

“I sort of doubt it was a death threat,” Jarvan continued cheerfully, pausing in front of him.

“Jarvan,” he responded, breathless in exasperation. “I need to ask you an honest question, and you’re not allowed to ask why I’m asking.”

“Deal.”

“What if Jericho Swain were to turn around and tell you he was attracted to you, and then threaten to spread an absolutely heinous rumor about you if you didn’t…if you didn’t let him…if you didn’t give him one kiss. Would you do it?”

The previously harmless smile spread across Jarvan’s entire face, exhibiting a corrosive mixture of shock, amusement, and horror, but mostly the former two. When he finally composed himself, he answered, “It would depend on a number of factors. Am I also attracted to him? Just how bad would it be if the rumor got out?”

“As of last night, yes,” Garen replied. “Bad. Pack-up-and-transfer-immediately bad.”

“Then, yes. I would do it. Reluctantly, but I would.”

“There you have it,” he said before picking back up his pace, and suddenly he was wondering why he thought ‘share a mutual kiss’ sounded better than ‘unwillingly receive a blowjob’.

The shock didn’t seem to have worn off yet, because Jarvan was still snickering as he followed. “Hey Garen, I had no idea that you were-”

“I thought we agreed not to ask any more questions,” he interrupted, though he had spent a good portion of the morning considering that very question. The only other time he had felt physical attraction towards another male was for Jarvan, upon their first meeting in the locker rooms, and that had quickly faded through conversation. Jarvan was sociable, kind-hearted, and full of unwavering determination. One of the reasons they got along so well as friends was because they agreed on so many topics of life and morality. All-in-all, however, Jarvan was boring. He was a social creature with impeccable manners (like Garen’s sister), and he had a picture-perfect life laid out in front of him. There was nothing more to him than the immaculate surface, or at least, he kept his other side so well-hidden that his best friend hadn’t seen any sign of it existing for an entire year.

Darius, on the other hand, infuriated him. Darius managed to set him off just by being in the same room; every roughly spoken word that came out of his mouth made Garen’s fists clench, but before that, it drew him close enough to throw insults. Every spark of anger pulled him in, every confrontation built an attachment that he was too prideful to ever admit to. Darius was an enigma, and most importantly, he made Garen feel _more_ than anyone else in this world. More anger, more hate, more passion.

More lust. Because what had happened was so unthinkable that it was intoxicating to think about, again and again, beyond his control. He would be lying if he tried to say he hadn’t imagined Darius sucking him off right there in that classroom, simply because it had happened once. His imagination kept recreating the scene as if by impulse, and each time he couldn’t decide whether he wanted it to go away or not.

Easy fix. Immersion therapy.

_If you have a problem, feel free to address it with me later._

“For the record, I _am_ straight,” he declared half-heartedly.

“For now,” Jarvan teased, but Garen almost imperceptibly nodded to himself.

_For now._

* * *

The evening had been too uneventful for Garen not to show up. The man behind the door was smiling again with that almost-smile, which seemed unnatural on his face. He looked better scowling, Garen thought. He looked better when he was angry enough to get in a fist-fight with him, or to have hate sex across the entire room - whichever way you wanted to look at it.

“I hate you,” was the first thing he said, and his stern gaze showed that he meant it. “I’m here to discuss something with you. Is anyone home?”

“Just me.”

“Good.”

They must have ran out of mango scent, because this time the place smelled overwhelmingly of coconuts and was scattered with a different variety of clothes and empty beer cans, though in similar amounts. Garen wouldn’t have been surprised if the lingerie was still sitting where he left it in the bathroom sink, soaked in soap and water and god knows what else, simply because the inhabitants of this home appeared to be too lazy to care about cleaning anything up properly.

“You kept your word about not telling anyone,” he began, seating himself tensely on the edge of the couch with his hands clasped in front of him. Darius remained standing as he searched for a different channel, his black tee tight against his chest. Garen tried not to notice, but he did. The annoyance he felt at not being given full attention didn’t help his nerves, either. “Why?”

“Why have so little faith in me?”

“I’ve watched you make deals with our classmates only to purposely break them minutes after they were made.”

“You put yourself on the same level as them?”

“I-” he started, but the question had taken him off-guard. It seemed natural that an enemy should lie at an even lower standing than an acquaintance, but in actuality, the opposite was true. An enemy held a far greater importance in a person’s life. He knew that now better than anyone.

“Even so, you should want nothing more than to humiliate me.”

As Darius placed the remote down on the coffee table, he passed Garen a stern sideways glance. “Did you really come here to interrogate me about our relationship?”

Garen flushed. The guy knew full well that his statement implied they _had_ some sort of relationship to begin with.

“Your intentions are unclear, and it’s making me uncomf-”

Before he could finish the sentence, Darius was climbing on top of him and he tried to deflect the huge man with a shove, but there were hands tight around his wrists, holding them back against the cushions. This time he thought he could escape if he wanted to, but the effort didn’t seem worth it.

“Don’t be a dumbass, Garen. I made my intentions clear when I told you that you’re attractive.”

“You’re my _enemy_.”

“So?” he muttered. He was close, and he didn’t smell like beer this time; he smelled like clean laundry and really nice cologne, which must have meant he cared at least a little about his public appearance. His face was sturdy and rugged, and from here Garen could see a thin scar slashing diagonally through the edge of his eye that he hadn’t noticed before. It was subtle, just a single line a shade lighter than the rest of his skin.

“How did you get that?” Garen asked, the direction of his glance signifying clearly what he was referring to.

“Knife fight. Don’t ask,” he responded, and it just added another layer of darkness to the veil of a person that he already was. Garen wasn’t having the ambiguity anymore.

“How did you get it?”

“I thought I said don’t ask.”

“I thought I asked.”

“Kiss me.”

“How did you get it?”

“Kiss me, and I’ll tell you.”

He didn’t even remember the conversation with Jarvan before doing it. This moment existed in and of itself, just the two of them in a cluttered college living room, and Darius tasted like fire with a hint of honey. He wasn’t sure if the burning sensation was from something spicy earlier that day or if it was just his own unexplainable physical reaction to doing something that was unutterably wrong, but it added a nice touch. It made him greedy. It made him open his mouth and run his tongue along the lips he had often wanted sewn shut, but that was when Darius pulled away, his expression content and cocksure, and his grip still just as tight on Garen’s wrists, pinching the skin ever so slightly.

“How did you get it?”

“I thought you hated me.”

Garen pursed his lips shut, his brows furrowing in indignation. “You promised.”

“Six years ago I lived in the city. Someone tried to mug me and I wasn’t going to sit back and watch.”

“You could have died,” he remarked unhappily. He didn’t like to think of others in danger. Not even Darius. _Especially_ Darius. He unconsciously thought of Darius as a punching bag reserved exclusively for himself, ready and waiting for the day that he got angry enough to use it.

“Is your pride really worth your life?”

“My life isn’t worth much, _clearly_.”

Something about his honest tone shocked Garen, and made him think twice about what this conversation was really about. Perhaps it was the certainty, the declaration of worthlessness stated as if it were an absolute fact. It pissed him off, how someone could be so sure that they didn’t matter, when in fact, they did.

But there had to be a reason that Darius would believe something like that, and the only reason he would bother bringing it up was if it continued to exist as a source of pain for him today.

“Is it true that you don’t have a mother?” Garen asked.

Darius visibly bristled. His response was instant, practiced, maybe not for this specific topic but for any unwelcome mention of anything involving his personal life. “Mind your own damn business.”

“It’s just a question, Darius. Is it true?”

He glanced away for a second before answering, and it was the first time Garen had witnessed any instance of vulnerability from the man. His body was visibly tense, the arm muscles strained and the veins taut against the underside of his skin. His response was quiet, but hadn’t lost its rocky lilt, which made everything he said sound something like a threat. “I hardly remember her. She could be dead for all I know.”

“What about your father?”

“Same thing.”

Acknowledging the answers was painful despite the fact that Garen had expected them beforehand. There was still a lot to the story that he didn’t know, like why Darius had been orphaned or what the conditions throughout his life had been like, but those details would come as they were entrusted to him. What he _did_ know was that Darius hadn’t had the luxury of proper role models, that in his younger years he hadn’t had a father to pass the football to or a mother to pack his lunches and clean his scrapes, that he had gone his entire life with the false knowledge that he hadn’t been worth taking care of.

Garen admired his parents as much as he sometimes despised them; he was who he was because of them, and he assumed that Darius was who he was partially due to a lack of them.

“I’m sorry,” Garen said, his voice soft as he replaced his own childhood memories with images of a crowded orphanage, and his mother’s face with an indistinguishable blur. “I can’t imagine what it would be like… To lose someone that important.”

At that moment his wrists were released, but Darius remained where he was, seated comfortably atop Garen’s lap without moving any closer or further. Maybe they had been like this long enough that it didn’t matter anymore, or maybe Garen was just starting to accept that he didn’t mind.

“Like I said, I hardly knew her,” Darius scoffed, as though it were an adequate reason not to care at all.

“That doesn’t mean you didn’t want to.”

“Fuck you. I don’t want to talk about this.”

“Then what do you want?”

There was a pause as he raised his hand to Garen’s jaw and moved in closer. He replied, “I want you to shut the hell up.”

Then he breached the little remaining gap and forced the other to do just that, his lips hard and merciless unlike before - the lips of a man who wants to forget - and whatever resistance Garen had determined to put up since then was shattered in a second. He buried his fingers in Darius’s hair and kissed back like he would never get the chance to again, because hell, maybe he wouldn’t, and in fact it still didn’t make sense that he’d even been offered the chance to do it once. He had never wanted this. He had never even thought about it to begin with.

Maybe that was exactly why he had never wanted it. He had never imagined what it would be like to take out all that anger on the very person who caused it without throwing a single punch. He had never thought of leaving a trail of bruises across that sturdy body with just his lips, had never pictured that defined back as an empty canvas to scratch bright red. He hadn’t been very creative with his ideas on how to make Darius scream, but now…now, just the thought had him reeling.

Then he felt a warm hand against the bare skin of his hip, beneath his shirt, moving upward, and he came to his senses. They were both male, and despite how hard he was at the thought of everything else, he _wasn’t_ about to have his backside violated. He grabbed the hand where it was, and broke the kiss, but found that he wasn’t sure what to say. How could he admit that he wanted this, except without all the things that _this_ actually entailed? Including but not limited to: fucking your worst enemy, admitting to fucking your worst enemy, admitting to ever _wanting_ to fuck your worst enemy, and anal penetration.

“What?” Darius remarked irritably, respecting Garen’s resistance physically but not verbally. “You want me to take you to dinner first? I’m not going to.”

“You’re a disrespectful piece of shit.”

Darius smirked. “You’re scared. I see it on your pathetic face.”

“Are you trying to say you’ve done this before?”

“I’m offended that last night wasn’t proof enough.” He withdrew his hand from Garen’s shirt and instead directed his strength toward pushing him sideways onto his back. There was some resistance, but not enough, and Garen immediately regretted it, because as Darius kissed him again he felt his jeans come undone and the warm pressure of a hand slide against his groin. He pushed half-heartedly against Darius’s shoulders. The rough lips pulled away and said, “Cry rape again, slut.” The pressure increased. “I dare you.”

“Did you just- _nngh…_ ”

The suddenness of the pleasure was blinding. Darius had moved down his body and started sucking him off, just the way he had before except it was _better_ this time, better because he was simultaneously pissed and aroused at the name-calling, better because he had partially accepted that this was happening at all, better because he was actually _watching_ as an experienced hand wrapped itself around the base of his cock and the arm muscles flexed visibly in response.

“Fuck,” he muttered breathlessly, letting his head fall back against the armrest, but just as he did the pleasure faded all at once. Darius was sitting up, unbuttoning the front of his own jeans. “Listen, I’m not going to…”

He trailed off as Darius pushed his jeans and boxers down his hips, not because he was startled by the size or the action or whatever else, but because _fuck_ , he never knew he could be so aroused at the sight of another male, by the defined abs just visible beneath the scrunched black shirt, the apollo’s belt that started from the hips and narrowed tantalizingly inward, the veins that became visible below the navel and continued downward to the head of an organ he had never imagined he would want so badly to touch.

He was glad that Darius didn’t seem to notice his mouth hanging open, and the dazed look in his eyes. He was busy lining up their cocks so he could stroke both at once, and suddenly Garen understood; they didn’t _have_ to go further to have sex, and Darius was doing it this way for his sake.

“You act like I don’t also have wants and needs,” he said, spitting on his hand to make himself slick before beginning. Even with a hand as big as his he couldn’t quite hold everything, but the sensation of skin-on-skin, hard and throbbing against each other, was better than Garen would have imagined.

“Which was I?” he couldn’t help but ask.

“After the look on your face when you came? A need. And you left me there to get off on the thought of you all by myself.”

“Shit,” Garen said, the pleasure rising the longer it went on. It didn’t help that he was imagining what Darius must have done after he’d left: sprawled out naked on his bed with his eyes closed, his hand moving hard and fast. Because of him.

“That’s what _I_ said.”

“I want…I want to stay the night…here.”

“What the fuck are you saying?”

He didn’t answer, but the resolution was clear in his eyes. He had both his hands on the back of Darius’s thighs now, clutching more needily with every second, certainly digging in through the denim and causing pain.

“Garen,” Darius said, his voice low and labored by breaths that were becoming steadily more difficult. He moved his free hand to Garen’s neck, caressing at first, and then pressed his thumb softly against the adam’s apple as if to indicate that he was still dangerous, that he had never been trustworthy and it didn’t make sense for Garen to start trusting him now. “Do you remember who I am?”

“Yes,” he responded without hesitation, his air supply hampered but not completely cut off.

There was a mix of anger and affection in Darius’s expression, a hint of weakness that was probably only seen once a decade or so, in the form of doubt in the opaque cloud of his eyes. He seemed unbreakable, but now Garen knew for sure that he wasn’t so; he was human just like everyone else.

As Garen came, a moan broke through his lips, and he never broke eye contact even as his face contorted in pleasure. He made it impossible for Darius not to move his hand from neck to couch, brace himself, and follow suit. Soon they were watching each other with fond disbelief as their breathing slowed, and the sticky mess dripping from hand to exposed stomach became unignorable. Darius raised his hand, careful not to let the liquid drip anywhere else, and cleaned off what hadn’t already landed on Garen’s shirt with tissues from the box on the coffee table.

“It would have been a lot easier if you had let me take off your shirt.”

“I didn’t trust you, asshole,” Garen retorted, in a tone that was becoming increasingly casual the more they insulted each other. He grabbed another tissue and wiped off his shirt best he could.

“And you do now?”

He paused and looked at Darius as he thought about it, but there wasn’t really much to think about. Trusting him now, after the unexpected consideration he’d demonstrated multiple times in the past two days, felt natural, but in retrospect it seemed strange that he should earn absolute trust just by exercising common human decency. There was something else going on here, something about the dynamic between them that made trusting him an uncontrollable instinct.

“I wouldn’t let myself sleep in the presence of someone I didn’t trust,” Garen said plainly, and Darius cast him a sharp glance as he got up and moved into the kitchen, his jeans pulled up and re-buttoned.

“I thought you would forget about that stupid idea once you had regained your senses.”

“Will you not let me?”

“Why the hell would I?”

“So you won’t?”

“Fine, go ahead, idiot. I’m making sausages. Go to my room and stay there.”

“I already ate,” he mentioned as he stood.

“I wasn’t making any for you anyways.”

There were two closed doors, one on either side of the short hallway, and of course the open bathroom at the very end. “Left or right?”

“Right.”

It was a plain, carpeted room with a queen-sized bed pushed into the corner, a shelved desk covered in papers and empty cans, and a pair of sliding doors concealing the closet. There were no decorations except for the clothes and crumpled papers scattering the floor, and an incredibly generic fruit painting. Surprisingly, it looked a little better than the living room, and it smelled like Darius, the leftover scent of his cologne lingering at a comfortable potency in the air.

The moment he shed his jeans and hit the bed he realized how tired he was, probably because he’d stayed up thinking and gotten very little sleep last night. He might have done the same tonight if he hadn’t decided to stay here. Aloneness had a way of making one think, which inevitably led to regretting. Perhaps that was exactly what he was trying to avoid, without knowing it consciously.

He set the alarm on his phone early enough to let him return home before class began. Then he drifted in and out, waking when Darius sat down at his desk accompanied by the smell of warm sausages, and again a couple of hours later, when the light turned off and they lay together but apart, two bodies pushed to the very edges of the bed with an inch of space in-between. It would have been nice to close the gap, Garen thought. To sleep against the warmth of the person he’d chosen to stay with instead of denying that he was lying there as a result of anything other than selfish whim. But he fell asleep before he could persuade himself to take the chance.

At one point, in the middle of the night, Darius turned and clutched Garen’s shirt in his sleep and made him just conscious enough to remember it in the morning. He didn’t know what it meant. He figured he had probably dreamt it.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoutout to ProtoDan for leaving my first comment and bringing a humongous smile to my face on an otherwise unremarkable morning. <3
> 
> Also shoutout to ProdigalEzplorer because I'M SO SORRY FOR NOT COMMENTING ANGRILY ON ALL YOUR FICS WHEN I WAS A LAME, TIMID LITTLE AO3 VISITOR. THEY ARE ALL ALWEGIHAWLI;EGJ AND I'M REALLY HAPPY THAT I'M NOT THE ONLY ONE OVER HERE SHIPPING DAR/GAR WITH ALL OF MY SOUL
> 
> And to EVERYONE taking the time to read this fic, leaving kudos, etc., thank you with all of my heart. You guys are what give me the motivation to keep on writing. c:
> 
> Enjoy!

In the morning, as Garen stared at the ceiling and remembered where he was, he felt an odd mixture of contentment and distress. His first thought was that he shouldn’t have been there. His second was that he was glad he was.

Darius was sleeping on his stomach with his arms wrapped around his pillow, which had turned slightly in Garen’s direction. They were barely touching, though he was sure that they hadn’t been when they’d fallen asleep. He was still lying on the edge. Darius had moved closer.

It was different, seeing him like this - without a scowl or a smile or anything but serenity on his face. He looked ordinary. He looked like the type of stranger you could strike up a conversation with without getting glared at and successively ignored. Garen hadn’t noticed it before. The creases in his forehead, the tension in his smile - those weren’t natural traits. They were the result of a pain or apprehension that had become natural to him, simply by existing in him every day for as long as he could remember. They would likely return the moment he opened his eyes again.

Garen’s phone was silent on the bedside table, so he sat up to turn off the impending alarm. It was exactly three minutes before the set time. The only way he wouldn’t wake up before his alarm was if he was incredibly hungover. He was a creature of habit, he supposed, and the majority of his evenings ended at a reasonable time anyway.

It didn’t occur to him that someone else in this apartment might have woken up early and tried to use the restroom at the same time as him. In the midst of a pounding headache and a plethora of muddled thoughts, he had forgotten that someone else might live in this apartment at all, so he left the door open, and as he washed his hands - in a sink that was fortunately free of lingerie - he looked up to meet eyes with a slightly younger, leaner Darius in the bathroom mirror, dressed in only a pair of dark blue briefs. The resemblance was too strong for them not to be related by blood, despite the light-hearted tune that he was whistling and the mustache gracing his upper lip. They had the same strong jaw, the thin, pursed lips, the piercing light green eyes.

However, Draven seemed far more easygoing, as he only paused in the hallway for a second before continuing past Garen into the bathroom, still whistling. It was as though Garen wasn’t even there, until Draven started pissing in the toilet right beside him and asked, quite casually, “So, is he a good lay?”

All the blood traveled to his face in a matter of milliseconds, and his heart began to panic shortly afterward. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Draven was the big talker. Draven wasn’t supposed to know.

“How should I know?” he blurted out, though the look on Draven’s face didn’t say he was convinced. “We were working on a school project.”

As he walked away he internally cursed himself. They had only been back in school for a single day. Not to mention there was only one bed in Darius’s room, and the couch had remained empty that night.

Stupid! How could he have been so reckless and _stupid-_

“Don’t worry,” Darius muttered from where he lay, half-awake so his expression was tense, but hadn’t yet regained its usual hatred of the world. “He won’t speak a word unless I tell him to.”

Garen had slammed the door behind him and was standing there against it, trying to calm himself down and believe whatever it was that Darius was claiming. He remembered being told that no one was home yesterday, but he also remembered falling asleep before hearing the front door open and close to indicate a new arrival. “Has he been here the entire time?”

“No. He comes home late. I told him to stop wasting so much time at parties and strip clubs and actually take school seriously for awhile, but he doesn’t listen.”

“You said that he would listen to you. That he wouldn’t talk.”

Darius turned onto his back, closed his eyes, and uttered, “He listens to me as long as it doesn’t require him to give up women, porn, or booze. He’s only seventeen and he’s determined to waste his talent. Now stop nagging, fuckwad.”

Garen swallowed his aggravation and picked his jeans up off the floor. He would have time to think about this later. “I need to go.”

“Then go.”

Something here was bothering him, and it wasn’t just the insult. He couldn’t fit images of last night in comfortably with what existed between them here and now. Darius acted like he didn’t care. At least Katarina had kissed him goodnight and had midnight conversations with him. They had talked and laughed together; they had been friends with benefits, but they had also been friends, and he was pretty sure that the issue caused by the Christmas incident would be remedied with time.

Maybe he said it without meaning it, just to see if he could elicit any sort of reaction. He was angry and he wasn’t exactly sure why. Either way, he said it. “I’m not coming back.”

“Suit yourself,” Darius responded, after a pause which wasn’t quite long enough to make Garen think twice. “Just remember that I gave you the best blowjob you ever had.”

He stood there in front of the door, disappointed without knowing he was disappointed, and pissed because _who cares_ if you know how to suck dick, if doing it meant nothing to you?

“What?” Darius muttered, looking at him. “You want another one?”

“Thank you for your hospitality,” he said, pulling on his jeans and opening the door, and in one formal statement he had cancelled out all the intimacy they had once had by offering a mutual confirmation that it was both transient and meaningless.

At the front door of the apartment, he barely heard the footsteps in time to turn around as Darius met him face-to-face, boxers, bed-hair, and all. “You should come back.”

“Why?”

Apparently that was the wrong question to ask, because Darius reacted with his usual hostility. The wrinkles were back, and the indignant scowl, the sharp voice. “Do whatever you want, shithead, but I like having you around.”

Then he waited for Garen to leave, his hand resting on the edge of the open door, ready to close it.

In the end, Garen couldn’t think of an adequate response, so he left it at that and walked away without looking back. When he heard the door close behind him, he felt something heavy and bothersome in his chest. He thought it might have been regret.

* * *

 Inside, Darius headed straight for the coffee pot. Draven was in the kitchen preparing breakfast for them both, still wearing solely his underwear. This was the usual routine, but most of the time Darius wasn’t awake to see it; he would wake himself up with just enough time to shower and scarf down the entire plate on his way to the door.

“Who’s that, Dar?” his brother asked, cracking half a dozen eggs into the skillet. He had long since given up on trying to eliminate the pet names. “You’ve had quite a few guys in here, but you never walk them to the door.”

“None of your business,” he responded on instinct, despite the fact that he already knew he was going to tell. It was Draven, after all. They were the only two who knew everything about each other. Everyone else existed outside a barrier of secrecy and trust that they had always promised would never be broken. “His name is Garen. He’s straight and he’s hated me since our very first quarter.”

Draven smirked, taking on a tone of feigned dramaticism. “ _Ohh,_ the _throes_ of unrequited love!”

“Shut the hell up. I don’t love him.”

“You clearly like him.”

By that time Darius had all but decided to tune out anything less than satisfactory to listen to. He grabbed the TV remote and sat down at the table, waiting for the coffee to boil. Returning to bed wasn't an option. Once he was up, he was up, no matter how badly he wished he wasn’t.

“You managed to bang a straight guy? I’m impressed,” Draven continued, but he received no answer. His brother’s eyes were glued to one of those highly inaccurate medical shows where every doctor is as good as a sexually active comedian. “He’s cute, y’know.”

“Keep your filthy hands off.”

“No promises.”

“I’ll cut off your dick while you’re sleeping.”

“See? You do like him.”

He had liked him since the first time he’d seen him, and he thought that hadn’t meant anything, because physical attraction was different from emotional attraction. They hadn’t even spoken until they were forced to start brainstorming for the group presentation in class, but now that he thought about it, he remembered exactly the way Garen had introduced himself, with humble but certain confidence, and how he had helped the others grow comfortable in a matter of minutes to speak their minds and share ideas just by asking questions with a smile on his face.

He remembered the timid girl in the group who he caught staring over and over again, who would approach Garen right after class to ask him something about the project, but he never caught the hint. He remembered the skepticism with which Garen had regarded his own standoffish behavior, and the bewildered glare when they finished presenting. That had been the start of all this. It was his fault that Garen considered him a selfish monster.

So how was it that the past two nights had happened at all?

“You look like you’re trying to burn a hole through the table with your eyes,” Draven said, setting a plate of omelette and a mug of black coffee down in front of him. He realized that he wasn’t even pretending to watch the TV anymore; he was staring blankly with his hands clasped in front of his lips.

“Is it rape if he enjoyed it so much that he came back the next day?”

“Shit, that’s a loaded question. Technically it’s rape until they explicitly say yes.”

“You should have seen the look on his face.”

Draven was grinning as he sat down to eat. Darius hadn’t touched his food yet; in fact, he hadn’t even acknowledged it.

“Would someone who really hates me that much kiss me willingly?”

“Only if he thinks you’re hot as hell.”

The truth was, that wasn’t the answer Darius was looking for, but it helped nevertheless. It helped him realize that people are conflicted, and that physical attraction can be related to emotional attraction, or it can’t be. Maybe people who were physically attracted asked questions so they could find out if they were emotionally attracted as well, and stay or leave depending on the result.

He felt a little sick. After all those questions, Garen had chosen the latter option.

And suddenly he remembered why it was better not to let people in, not even for a second. Once you gave them the power to destroy you, they would do it.

“Fuck him,” Darius muttered, beginning to eat.

“You shouldn’t give up so easily on something you care about. I thought you of all people should know that, Mr. Naggy Bitchface.”

“He doesn’t give a shit about me.”

“How do you know?”

“He said he wasn’t coming back.”

“He’s straight,” Draven declared knowledgeably. “Or at least he thought he was. Just because he’s confused as hell because he fucked a guy, it doesn’t mean he’s not going to change his mind and embrace it later.”

That was the end of the conversation, if only because Darius was determined to believe that this whole thing was incontrovertibly over, for his own sake. He didn’t want Garen to come back and get confused again. He didn’t want to have to wonder if it was rape.

In class that day he kept his eyes forward, even as he left. He must have looked especially unapproachable, because nobody talked to him, not even Katarina. Most of his friends were in different fields of study, so he didn’t see them much. He didn’t mind, or at least, he had been telling himself he didn’t mind for so long that he actually believed it.

He was a solitary creature, and he wanted to keep it that way, if only because there was no one else worth trusting in this world.

* * *

 The following week, Garen was invited to a house party by Lux, who heard about it from Ezreal, who was supposedly pretty well-acquainted with the guy who was throwing the party. He was one of those guys that everyone knows about but no one really _knows_. His name was Jayce, and from what Garen heard, he lived with his parents in a huge mansion which he held a party in every time his parents went out of town. The entire student body was invited, or rather, everyone in the student body who was someone enough to hear about it, to understand what kind of event of it was, and to still want to attend, which was only a small percentage.

As the Crownguard siblings drove around the enormous fountain in the center of the driveway and watched the white house loom over them, they understood perfectly how it could accommodate so many people, and that there must have been plenty of family employees ready to serve as a clean-up crew. Already, a man in a suit was approaching to offer them mandatory valet.

Garen regarded the mansion with bewildered scrutiny as he got out of the car, remarking, “Who is this guy, the 21st-century Gatsby?”

“I sure hope not, ‘cause that would mean I’d never get to meet him,” Lux responded, her eyes practically sparkling as she smiled up at the place, adjusting her dress. It was a flashy silver one-shoulder; probably she had been waiting for an opportunity to wear it all year, and she wasn’t going to pass up this one because of the fading winter chill.

Garen, on the other hand, was still wearing shorts, tank, and hoodie from his visit to the gym earlier that day. He wasn’t sure whether he had actually wanted to attend this party, but Lux had given him no opportunity to refuse. She was in a phase of insisting that he meet as many girls as possible, since Katarina was ‘taking so long to come around’. He still hadn’t told her about the Christmas present mix-up, and he wasn’t sure he ever would, since it was her mistake and it would embarrass her immensely.

The doors were wide open, and they led into a picturesque marble-floored parlor with an enormous chandelier hanging overhead. There were plenty of students bustling around, mainly gawking, and enough open rooms for all of them to hang about comfortably. Lux headed straight forward into the dining area, her brother in tow, but once they arrived there she turned and said, “Okay, I’m gonna go. You sure you can find a ride home?”

“I’m sure. Don’t let your eyes off your drinks.”

“I know. See you!”

He was left alone beside the kitchen bar as Lux disappeared into the sea of people. Various appetizers filled the dining table nearby, though, predictably, most people were more interested in the alcohol. It appeared that the biggest crowd was outside in the backyard, which had another bar, a live DJ, and a pool which no one was swimming in quite yet. Once the average blood alcohol content of the partygoers rose high enough, people would start getting pushed in fully dressed, and then probably a mild fight would break out.

Just as he had finished his own gawking and turned around to get a drink, Jarvan pushed him in the shoulder. “Fancy seeing you here, handsome gentleman. Did you just come from the gym or what?”

“Yeah, actually. Lux dragged me along.”

“Sisters, right?” he responded, though they were both perfectly aware he was an only child. “Anyway, you act like that’s a bad thing. Look at this place! What’s not to enjoy?”

Jarvan had a good point. Two years, or maybe even one year ago, Garen would have been thrilled to attend a party like this, but he supposed he had changed a bit since then. He spent a lot more time on his own, and sometimes he wondered what he _actually_ wanted to do with his life. In high school he had actively participated in the social scene just to feel the thrill of being known and loved, because in his uncultured teenage mind, that had been the only thing worth accomplishing. He was known _now_ because his social habits hadn’t worn off yet, not because he was making an active effort. All it really took was athletic involvement and a smile.

“Come on, there’s a pool table in the other room and I’m on a winning streak,” Jarvan said once they had their drinks, beckoning him over. “There’s this girl in the corner who keeps smiling at me. She’s a goddess, man. If I play it right, this could be the night of my life…”

Three games, ten drinks, and several dances with strangers later, Jarvan was stumbling toward the exit with his new lady and Garen hardly had the wits to remember that he needed to find a new ride home. It was getting to that time in the evening when nobody really knew what they were doing anymore, except the designated drivers, who were slowly but surely towing their half-conscious passengers to the car. The crowd had thinned to a much more comfortable level.

Outside, the DJ had retired for the night and left softer party music playing in the background. There were several swimmers, but mainly people slouching around the tiki bar. Quinn was sitting at one end with half a dozen empty glasses around her and a sour look on her face. At the other end, Darius was chatting with the current bartender - probably a student who’d offered to take over for some extra cash - looking stereotypically mean and decidedly sober.

When Garen had spotted Draven earlier, it had occurred to him that Darius might be there too, but he had been too preoccupied to think about it for long. His first instinct had been to think that he was too much of an antisocial asshole to want to come, but now it made sense that maybe he was Draven’s designated driver. Now, looking at him, Garen didn’t have a filter available to stop him from remembering everything that had happened, which he had tried his damnedest to ignore for this past week. In an instant he was fuming, because he thought that half-smile that had just appeared on Darius’s face was a rarity, not a convention to be passed out at any old kid with a nice body and a conversation to share. He was too drunk to consider the aspect of sexuality; the bartender was more than likely straight as a board.

He charged over to that side of the bar. Darius noticed him just in time to have an accusing hand clasp his shirt at the shoulder.

“What are you doing here?” Garen scoffed.

“Am I not allowed to be at a party?”

It pissed him off how Darius wasn’t even bothered, how a week straight of managing not to even glance at Garen in class ended in a glare that said it hadn’t been purposeful, it had just happened that way because Garen wasn’t worth noticing. This was exactly why he had distanced himself from the guy in the first place.

He simply didn’t care about anyone but himself.

“C’mere, asshole, I have something to say to you,” Garen demanded, because of course he wouldn’t accept that conclusion.

Darius looked back over at the student bartender before standing up. “Sorry, Talon, I have unfinished business with this dumbass.”

“No worries.”

If Garen had been in his right mind, he wouldn’t have decided it was necessary to have a private conversation somewhere in the midst of a mansion filled with peers. He probably wouldn’t have approached Darius in the first place, and even if he had, he would have at least thought about what it was he wanted to say before dragging him into the nearest bathroom without even checking to make sure no one had seen.

But he wasn’t in his right mind, and to tell the truth, he hadn’t been for awhile. Not since he’d left the other’s apartment a week ago with a voluntary promise not to return. He was still waiting for a reaction that he knew would never come; if he wanted one, he would have to demand it.

So he did. As they stood face-to-face in the spacious downstairs bathroom of a complete stranger’s house, he locked the door behind him and demanded the answer he didn’t want to hear.

“Tell me that you didn’t feel anything.”

“I felt nothing,” Darius responded, sharply and without hesitance. It was like a blow to Garen’s stomach, which had already spent the past week flattening itself on the inner wall of his back every time he so much as _remembered_ what had happened between them. He hadn’t thought about what he would do if he actually received the answer he’d asked for. He hadn’t thought about what he would do once Darius answered, period.

Luckily he didn’t have to worry about being the only one at a loss for words, because just then the door handle rattled and a voracious fist tapped the other side of the door.

Both of them muttered ‘shit’ under their breath, and after a startled pause, Darius shouted, “Find another bathroom! I ate something bad.”

“Now we have to stay in here,” Garen complained, since he had at least retained enough of his brainpower to realize that it was suspicious for the two of them to emerge from the bathroom together. If they were female, then maybe, but they were two grown-ass musclehead males who were supposed to hate each other.

“You’re welcome, dumbass,” Darius retorted. “Do you have a problem with it?”

“I do have a problem with it.”

“It was your idea to come in here.”

It was also his idea to press the other’s body against the wall with his own and kiss him, just to see if it would change his answer, but that didn’t stop him from blaming the whole thing on Darius anyway. It _hadn’t_ been his idea to dress up in women’s lingerie and get head from the unexpectedly sexy fuck who was supposed to hate him the most. It hadn’t been his idea to let it happen it again, or to stop hating him just because he’d figured out there was more to him than an inexplicable loathing of the world. It didn’t make sense, but it was happening nonetheless. Garen _wanted_ him. Garen wanted to earn his trust, to learn everything there was to know about him, to understand, to love, to be loved.

Darius shoved him hard enough to make him fall back onto the toilet, or at least it felt that hard.

“You taste like shitty wine and you can hardly stand up straight,” he said, and in his scolding voice it almost sounded like there was genuine concern. “Go home.”

“Can’t,” Garen muttered, suddenly realizing how easily he could fall asleep if he sat down for too long.

“Why?”

“My ride left me for a woman.” He braced his arm on the counter to stand up, only to stumble straight into Darius, grab his shirt again, and glare at him accusingly. “Why did you push me, you piece of ass?!”

Darius guessed that ‘piece of ass’ was an unintentional melding of ‘asshole’ and ‘piece of shit’, but took it as a compliment anyway.

“I’ll find Draven and take you home,” he sighed, making an attempt to hold Garen out at arm’s length without letting him fall, and finding that it was impossible. Every time he tried to push Garen away, he came back to claw at his shirt and give comically threatening looks. Eventually he fell against Darius’s shoulder and stayed there, head resting sideways as though he were falling asleep - and he probably was.

They said people were most honest when they were drunk. Darius didn’t know if that applied to actions as well, but as his own arms hung limp at his sides and Garen clung to him willingly, he would have liked to believe it.

* * *

The assigned reading that night was _The Prince_ by Niccolò Machiavelli, or at least as much of it as Darius could get through until the body laying beside him muttered, without forewarning, “Chartreuse,” and he glanced over to find Garen staring happily at him instead of sleeping.

In the car he had either refused to give his address or was too drunk to understand the question, which was why he was here now.

“I had to take a painting class in high school,” he continued, before Darius could ask why the hell he was blurting out the name of an expensive liqueur when he should have been asleep. “The standard paint set had this really ugly yellow-green called chartreuse. That’s the color of your eyes.”

He was offended until Garen turned onto his back, closed his eyes, and added, “You make it look _splendid_.”

The last time Darius had received a compliment, it had been on his ‘mean right hook’ at an MMA tournament. The time before that had probably been Draven, and the time before that, and the time before that.

 _Rose,_ he would have said, if he planned on saying anything. _That’s the color of your cheeks when you’re drunk._

Instead, he set the book down on the bedside table, turned off the light, and lay down. This time Garen scooted up beside him and laid an arm across his chest. A quick glance revealed that he was still smiling like an idiot.

“I wanted to kiss you, but you pushed me,” he complained. It took a couple of seconds for Darius to translate the slurred garble.

“Do you still want to?”

“Yeah.”

Darius turned to peck his lips. They brushed together for a moment before Garen started to stick his tongue out, and Darius withdrew.

“Tease,” Garen muttered.

“In the morning you’ll be disgusted again.”

“Will not.”

“Yeah you will, straight boy.”

“But I like you.”

“No you don’t.”

Garen must have lost track of the conversation at that point, because he stopped responding and started snoring a minute later. The cycle of drunken emotions had been a marvel to witness: first anger, then passion, then unabashed affection.

_Could it be that being with me actually made him happy?_

It made _him_ happy, for a moment, to entertain that notion, but the reality was that Garen was drunk and didn’t know what he was thinking. The reality was exactly as Darius had said. They would wake up and resume exactly where he had left off before the party. Garen wouldn’t remember this conversation, or the color chartreuse. He would probably be pissed to find himself back here again.

He had read something by Machiavelli that night that made sense to him, even if he didn’t like the fact that it did. It was possible that Garen actually did like him, judging by the choices he had made during their last several meetings. Even if he did, nothing could ever happen between them.

_“Men in general judge more by the sense of sight than by the sense of touch, because everyone can see but few can test by feeling. Everyone sees what you seem to be, few know what you really are; and those few do not dare take a stand against the general opinion.”_


	4. Chapter 4

Garen pressed his palm against his throbbing forehead and tried to remember. His most recent memory was of the mansion’s downstairs bathroom. He remembered a knock on the door, a kiss, a shove, and a single phrase: _I felt nothing._ The scene was a blur, and afterward came blank space in his memory.

Upon waking with his limbs all over the man he’d sworn never to return to, the first thing he had done was pull up the covers to see if their clothes were still on. Darius was in a tank and boxers; Garen was fully dressed. It was clear that nothing had happened, unless Darius had actually taken the time and effort to re-clothe him afterward to cover it up, but that didn’t seem reasonable. It no longer seemed like something he would do.

It had been _Garen_ who attempted to start something, Garen on the receiving end of the shove. He had been almost black-out drunk in the same bed and completely willing to give his body over, yet nothing had happened. He wasn’t sure whether to take it as an insult or to acknowledge that Darius had exercised a thing that this generation called chivalry. He wasn’t sure which was better for his own sake.

“Do you need a glass of water?”

He looked over to find that Darius was awake, and hadn’t donned his angry expression quite yet. Garen pulled his hand away from his face and scrutinized.

“That would be nice.”

The bed felt far more comfortable than it should have when he lay back down. It almost made him forget the troubling situation at hand, the headache, and the self-conscious knowledge that he badly needed to brush his teeth. When Darius returned with the water, Garen could have sworn that he had already been asleep for another twenty minutes.

Darius didn’t mention the party, the kiss, the fact that they were in bed together. He simply lay back down and closed his eyes like nothing had happened, like this was where they were supposed to be, and that it all made perfect sense.

“Thank you,” Garen said, after draining the glass and placing it on the floor beside the bed. He was starting to feel the hangover sickness in his stomach as well as his head.

A grunt of acknowledgment came from the half-sleeping figure beside him.

“Not just for the water. I can imagine I was acting less than modestly last night, and you, well…”

He paused long enough to make it pointless to finish the sentence. He was perfectly aware of how to put it into words, but not how to say them out loud without feeling foolish.

“If you’re thanking me for not nailing you when you were too piss-drunk to remember your own address, then you have the wrong idea of how consensual sex works.”

First, he was surprised. Shocked, even, at the outbreak of sensibility from someone who hardly opened his mouth except to spout insults at people. Then he felt a warmness in his chest - that strange sensation of comfort that was so natural he hardly noticed it until he was out the door and it disappeared.

“That’s an interesting statement, coming from someone who kept going after I said rape.”

“How else was I supposed to convince you that I’m not interested in our little feud?”

“You could have said something nice to me. Asked me how my day was going instead of glaring every day with all the intensity of the fires of hell.”

“I asked you how your Christmas went. You might as well have told me to go fuck myself in response.”

He remembered the texts. He remembered how rude he had been. “You’re right about that. I’m am sorry...”

Then he remembered _why_ he had felt the need to be so rude, and added, “But I think you owe apologies to a lot more people than I do.”

“Why should I bother being nice to people who don’t give a shit?”

“It affects them, you know. People take things personally even when they’re not.”

“Like you?”

Garen thought about it, then nodded. “Like me.”

It must have not had the desired effect of pissing Garen off, because Darius didn’t have another smart-aleck answer for him. The angry expression was there now, even with eyes closed.

“It must be your only way of feeling important. By making people hate you, you become someone that they _remember_ , oftentimes even more than those who do good-”

Darius was on his knees on the mattress with the front of Garen’s hoodie grasped in both hands. His voice had not raised, but lowered, and it was even more menacing that way; he was a panther waiting to pounce, and destroy. “Who the _hell_ do you think you are?”

“I care about you,” Garen told him, maybe not because he meant it - at least not for any other reasons than selfish ones - but because Darius needed to be told. He moved forward as though he were going to kiss him, but continued past until he had Darius wrapped in his arms. He felt the knuckles push against him, dig into his chest, and finally slacken.

“Fuck you.”

They were there for a long moment before Darius put his strength into a single shove which knocked them apart. Somehow Garen didn’t mind; when he fell back against the headboard and his brain slammed against the back of his skull and his stomach turned, he blamed it on the alcohol, and on himself. He was starting to see the fear behind Darius’s actions, the other emotions clouded constantly by anger and fabricated hate. He didn’t think it was his imagination, not anymore.

And more than that, he felt an obligation to fix it. If he was really the only one who knew, then it would have been a crime against humanity to walk away from something so broken without doing a thing. It would have been a crime against himself not to acknowledge that he cared enough - selfishly or not - to go beyond his limits for this man without batting an eyelash. Who knew that an accidental box of Christmas lingerie could change everything?

At least for him.

_I felt nothing._

Another pain sliced his gut and it wasn’t the alcohol. Maybe now that he was fully conscious, he could read the lines beneath the immediate surface, but his clouded memory of that phrase was accompanied by only a stolid expression with no underscores, nothing to indicate that Darius didn’t mean what he said.

Garen did the only thing he could that felt right. He told the truth. He was in pain, but not afraid; he was hardly ever afraid. His parents had always told him that he was confident to the point of recklessness, even as a kid, but he had never given it much thought.

“I would kiss you if my mouth didn’t taste like bile,” he said.

Darius looked away, and muttered, “Get out.”

“Why-?”

“You heard me.”

Garen wished he hadn’t. He had the same feeling as last time, that this wouldn’t happen again, that despite everything occurring between them, he had been deemed unwelcome here. But it was clear to him that there was nothing more he could do.

He stood up, bracing himself on the wall until he felt steady enough to walk without stumbling. Without looking, he said, “Thank you, Darius. You’re a lot more than I ever thought you were. It was wrong of me to make assumptions.”

Then he left.

Draven was whistling in the kitchen, but he didn’t notice anything until the front door slammed shut. He spotted Garen through the open blinds and muttered to himself, “Only lovers quarrel. Straight boy ain’t no casual fuck, noooo siree.”

He proceeded to sing “Wannabe” with all the passion of the Spice Girls themselves until the pancakes were finished, at which point he burst into Darius’s room and performed the chorus complete with a full dance number, plate balanced expertly in hand.

* * *

That night at 11:42 PM, there was a calm knock on Garen’s window. It took him a couple of seconds to open his eyes and comprehend what had woken him up, but when he did, he was surprised. Only one person he knew did this kind of thing.

She was standing there just as expected, clothes battered from practice and red hair shining in the moonlight. She wore a somber, withdrawn expression that he hadn’t seen on her before. As though she were admitting without words that she had made a mistake.

“I talked to Lux at the party,” she said, before he could wake himself up enough to greet her properly. Her voice was smooth, but dark. It reminded him of flowers - maybe lilacs. “Turns out you weren’t lying about the gift.”

He felt relieved. Then, apprehensive, but at the time he didn’t quite understand it was because he knew what would happen next, just the way it always had before.

“Could I come in?”

“Yeah… Yeah, of course.”

She headed straight to his bedroom, knowing the way well enough not to stumble in the dark. Once they were both there, she closed the door and hugged him, her cheek resting against his chest and her fingers gripping his white shirt at the back. This was something she hadn’t done before. Maybe once, when she was sad about something she had never told him about, just told him to fuck her until she forgot.

“She told me you meant to give me lingerie.”

“Yeah…” he agreed, because he wasn’t about to tell her that the lingerie hadn’t been his idea, not while she donned that quiet sentimental tone of voice. “There was a mix-up with the wrapping, and…”

She let go and looked up at him as he trailed off, grasping his hands in hers. Then she moved backwards, pulling him with her as she fell onto the bed. This was the part where he was supposed to kiss her and run his hand down her side, slip his fingers into the loose pants she was wearing and tease her by touching her oh-so-delicate thighs, because women took a lot more foreplay to enjoy themselves. But he paused for just a moment too long and she pulled him down by the neck and kissed him instead.

Her legs wrapped around his waist and he felt the heat against his groin, soft and receptive. As he laid a hand on her hip and felt upwards, he couldn’t help thinking how light she was, how _easy_ it was to kiss her and move her and control her. There had been times she’d taken the lead, but in the end it was a farce. Anytime she sat atop him he could have easily flipped her over, anytime she tapped him or held his hands down he could have easily retaliated with five times the force.

“If you still have it, I could wear it for you…” she whispered against his lips when they parted, running her pliant fingers through his hair.

“I don’t, and it’s a bit of a long story,” he responded, kissing her like he wanted to, rough and intrusive, but it wasn’t the same. She gave back, but not enough. Her nails in his back were blunt edges, her heat bucking up against him was a flat surface with no power, a hidden waste receptacle for male carnality.

He almost bit her out of shock for his own thoughts. He felt the heat against him now and imagined heaven within. The other thoughts had been momentary, flying through as impulses that weren’t necessarily true, but they had come from some part of him nevertheless. He felt sick despite his growing lust. He didn’t deserve this; he didn’t deserve _her_ , not while he was thinking like this.

“Katarina,” he uttered, pulling away and turning his eyes away from hers, but even as he did he felt a rough hand yank his collar, heard a deep voice taunt him beside his ear. _You’re gonna pussy out now, straight boy?_

_Fuck you._

_Anytime._

“I… I shouldn’t do this.”

She let her legs fall back down to the bed and placed a hand against his erection. “You found somebody else.”

It would have been a lie to deny it, as badly as he wanted to believe that whatever was going on with Darius was nothing more than a passing phase, that _‘I felt nothing’_ didn’t bother him and that he didn’t feel even more turned on by his involuntary imaginings of the other male’s voice.

“Who is it?” she asked, rubbing him gently. When he didn’t answer, she repeated the question and gripped the outline of his cock through his boxers tight enough for it to barely ache, and he wondered how the hell it was that he was attracted to these types of people - the ones who were feisty when hurt, who acted solely for themselves and didn’t care about the pain they caused to others.

He grabbed her wrist with the clear implication that he could break it if he wanted to. Of course he never would.

“I can’t tell you.”

“Why?”

“You’d probably have a heart attack if I did,” he answered, sitting up as he pulled her hand away from him. “Anyone would.”

She almost chuckled, but she wasn’t amused. “Who is it, your mother? Your sister? I won’t judge.”

He shook his head as he climbed off of her to sit on the edge of the bed. “You should go, Katarina.”

After a moment he heard the bedsheets shuffle and her footsteps on the floor. Guilt racked him, and he apologized, but she didn’t answer. He was left sitting there in the silent darkness as he listened to the front door close.

* * *

When he sat down in discussion section the following morning, the room was nearly empty. A couple of girls came ambling in chatting about how there was a fight over by the science trailers, and about how people were stupid for skipping the beginning of class just to watch.

Garen was about to ask them who was fighting, but a feeling in his gut told him he already knew. He brushed past a surprised Jarvan on his way out but didn’t stop to say anything. The crowd near the science trailers was thin enough for him to look through from afar and confirm his suspicions.

He barreled into the center of the circle just in time to shove Darius away from a considerably smaller student in a hoodie who had fallen to the ground. He didn’t look too battered yet, just frightened. The student scrambled to his feet as Darius regained his balance, pointing and shouting something about how he hadn’t done anything - this crazy guy had just walked right up to him and socked him in the face.

“Fuck off, Crownguard!” Darius threatened, his previous victim all but forgotten as he directed his glare toward the new contender. This time, Garen saw nothing there but malice.

“What the hell is this about?!”

“I said _fuck off_.”

Darius slammed into him with all the force of a rolling freight train, but Garen held his ground with all the stubbornness of a steel-horned bull. Through labored breaths he asked, “Is it true he didn’t do anything?”

“These _shitheads_ think they can say whatever they want-”

“What did they say, Darius? Are you going to let strangers offend you so easily?!”

“Not me, dumbass, Draven. You think I care if someone thinks I’m an asshole?”

They ricocheted apart then, but Darius charged back in as soon as he was able and landed a punch to the face that knocked Garen into the side of the science trailer. Garen’s arms were up in defense before another blow could find its mark. It felt as though a bolt of white lightning had singed the skin of his cheek.

“Stop this, Darius,” he demanded, breathing hard as he deflected punches, but never throwing one of his own. “At this rate you’ll get us both expelled.”

Darius stopped then, to Garen’s surprise, but they locked eyes and he didn’t back away until several moments later. He turned toward one section of the crowd that had formed and growled, _“Leave.”_

Just when it seemed like he would have to repeat himself, the students standing there began to file away, mumbling defensively amongst each other. It was almost comical, watching him turn in a full circle and will the onlookers away with his glare. When the circle had dissipated and he finally turned back toward Garen, his expression didn’t soften, but Garen saw it differently now. The intimidation he had once felt was gone, despite the burning sensation that remained where Darius’s fist had left it.

The assailant stepped forward. His eyes passed down the body in front of him and back up almost quickly enough for Garen not to notice. He said, “I’m going to walk into the nearest empty classroom, and you’re going to follow me. Shut your mouth, and do it.”

The nearest empty classroom was right there in one of the science trailers - the furthest one, with an entrance hidden from all the others. As Garen entered he felt his heart pound because he didn’t know what would happen next; he figured that this classroom was a battleground hidden from view, a place where he could be killed and his body found hours later if he lost the fight.

But when the door closed behind them and Darius turned to meet him, he didn’t raise his fist. He smashed his lips against Garen’s and shoved his hand under Garen’s shirt, raising the fabric to expose half his torso. When he paused it was to say, “Let me have you,” and leave his mark on the other’s neck, eliciting an unwilling moan. He was hard against Garen’s thigh.

“Fuck,” was Garen’s first response, and suddenly his heart was pounding for a very different reason. This didn’t make sense. Just yesterday Darius had wanted nothing to do with him. Even disregarding that, the current situation should have elicited a lust for blood, not sex.

“Garen,” he muttered impatiently, his teeth still grazing against the sensitive skin of Garen’s neck.

He retained at least enough sense to argue, “This is a public classroom with an unlocked door.”

“I study here when I don’t feel like attending discussion. No one ever comes in.”

“Regardless-”

He was cut off by Darius’s mouth, and convinced by the hand that slipped into his pants. They were there against the door for a good minute before parting long enough for Garen to insist, “And what if someone does come in here?”

“Then I’ll bash their head in on the whiteboard and bury them behind the bleachers.”

Still, he argued, and what he said implied an acceptance that he wouldn’t have even considered several weeks past. The previous night had been a turning point.

“My first time is not about to be in a place like this.”

Darius continued stroking him, his voice dark and barely audible as his lips grazed the unmarked side of Garen’s neck. “If only I were willing to do it anyways. But you…” He trailed off, but didn’t pause long quite enough for Garen to catch his meaning. (I care about you.)

“Fine. Have me, then,” he finished.

“What?” Garen retorted, but Darius had already extracted his hand and was walking toward the instructor’s desk.

“Do I have to fucking repeat myself?”

He seated himself on the desk and pulled his shirt off, then his pants, and Garen found himself utterly aroused by the short distance between this room and the students outside, the thought of a professor laying their materials out on that very same desk. He had never crossed a line like this before. The moment Darius’s boxers hit the floor was the moment he decided he had lingered too long and couldn’t turn back.

As he moved forward, he admitted, “I don’t know what to do.”

“The motion is the same,” Darius responded, wetting two fingers with his mouth. “I’ll do the rest.”

Then he lifted his legs far enough to slip one finger inside himself, moved it slowly in and out, his lips parting and all but releasing a sound. He was watching Garen as though he could see nothing else. Garen felt so many things at once that he could hardly breathe but didn’t notice. He touched the other’s lips with his fingers and said, “Let me.”

The way Darius’s tongue ran along his skin made him think of their first night. It made him realize how easy it was for Darius to convince him where it should have been impossible. He felt both anger and admiration. The man had been under his skin from the very beginning; now it was just in a different way.

And he never wanted this to go back to the way it was.

It was hot inside him, and incredibly tight on all sides. At first Garen pretended it was a woman, but that thought became unnecessary when he realized he was just as turned on by the fact that Darius was a man. After a minute Darius said, “Hurry up. I’m not a pansy.”

Garen smiled, pushing a second finger in. “Sorry. Almost forgot.”

Then a third, and there was a reaction to that one. A crack in his stone-carved expression, a grunt that he wasn’t able to restrain in time. He pulled a condom out of the back pocket of the jeans still draped over the edge of the desk. “Get on with it. Your fingers don’t reach far enough.”

“What do you mean?”

He smiled, his voice descending to a tone that tied Garen’s stomach up. “To hit the part that feels good.”

Garen unzipped his pants, put on the condom, and shoved inside, pulling the other’s hips to the edge of the desk to meet him. Darius gripped his forearms because they were the only part of Garen he could reach, releasing a sound that was far less than modest. He was lying on his back, the undersides of his thighs fully exposed, his muscled chest rising and falling rapidly. And _god_ , he was tight.

“You said you’re not a pansy.”

“When you shove it in like that, it _hurts_.”

“You tell me that after demanding I get on with it?”

“Fuck you, dickhead,” he breathed, bringing a hand to his own cock, and the sight was enough to make Garen start moving, slowly.

“What do you want, then?”

“A gradual build-up. Just like that.”

Darius laid his head back, one hand gripping the edge of the desk and the other stroking himself at Garen’s pace. At that moment he was completely resigned, and Garen wondered how being punched in the face had led to getting laid by the very same person.

There was a clue in that gut feeling he’d had earlier, that Darius would be the one to get in a fight that day. He’d been angry last they saw each other, either because Garen had been right in his bold assumptions or unbelievably wrong, but the fact that Darius still wanted him led him to believe more strongly in the former possibility.

_I felt nothing._

Every time he thought he had found some place in the life of this man, that single phrase came back to maim his confidence, to stomp on a wound just healed. He bent forward to kiss Darius and remained there with their foreheads touching, halting the movement of his hips. He asked, “What is this? Why here, why now?”

“Because I wanted you.”

“I’m not interested in a one night stand.”

“Learn to count, Garen. This is the third time, and I’m not even close to finished with you.”

When he opened his eyes, he was smiling despite himself, and Darius looked as though he would throw another punch if Garen didn’t fuck him immediately. His cheek still stung from the last one. He started moving again, this time at a much quicker pace.

“Stop teasing,” Darius muttered with a smirk, matching every thrust with a slight movement of his own.

Then Garen gripped his hips and thrust hard enough to make the desk rattle, and by the expression on Darius’s face he figured he had hit the part that felt good. He kept hitting it until he felt his stomach clench and his cock throb and release, and when he was finished he watched Darius stroke himself to climax.

Suddenly the air was unbelievably hot, the desk sticky, and as Garen caught his breath he couldn’t remember how in the world he’d been convinced to make love in a place like this.

“Not bad,” Darius remarked between breaths, lying patiently as Garen pulled out of him. He barely winced. Before Garen could respond, Darius sat up straight and kissed him, his hands resting tenderly on the other’s cheeks, his manner almost uncharacteristically gentle.

There was that feeling in Garen’s stomach again, which he kept trying to ignore. The same type of queasiness that came naturally before an oral presentation, except different. He wanted to be exactly where he was and on the opposite side of the world all at the same time.

“You’re spawned of the Devil. _Now_ I’m convinced,” he said quietly.

“Why’s that?”

Garen shook his head, smiling, and answered, “To think I considered myself proper. And here we are.”

“Do you regret it?”

“Not in the least.”

He stepped back when Darius pushed him and watched him wipe his stomach with a tissue, then dress. It was becoming less and less strange to see Darius this way; now it was simply arousing as hell.

“We’ve already missed half of discussion section,” Garen remarked. “Let me come home with you.”

“I have class again in a couple of hours.”

“So do I.”

“Why the hell do you want to come over?”

“Why did I come last time? Well…not last time. The time before.”

“Because you were bored?”

“Well, partly, but also… Shit. The point is, I want to.”

“I don’t want to be seen walking with _you_.”

“Then I’ll walk separately.”

Darius looked at him for a moment as though he were pleasantly surprised at Garen’s tolerance for him. And not _just_ tolerance, but desire to be around him beyond the expected bare minimum of fucking him and moving on.

He said unexpressively, “Fine. You’d better know the way, ‘cause I’m not helping.”

Then he exited the trailer. Garen propped himself up against the edge of the desk, figuring he would wait a minute or so to leave without drawing suspicion. Sometimes it still pissed him off, how Darius was too stubborn to outwardly express anything unrelated to hatred. Even when they fucked, his tone was detrimental, as though Garen couldn’t do it perfectly right. Of course he couldn’t. He had never fucked a man before. More importantly, he had never fucked Darius.

It made him want to try again and again, to learn every nuance of his body, to take advantage of that knowledge and force that impregnable will to break, and hear him beg. He recognized that these thoughts were quite unlike himself. They were carnal. They were vulgar.

But they faded along with the adrenaline rush, and in place of them came a more passive anger brought on by the fact that he couldn’t get what he wanted, at least not yet. There was no simple or easy way to understand Darius, no openly available entrance into his personal life. No way to earn his trust other than to tolerate all his bullshit for who knows how long.

He asked himself again why he made himself put up with his, why he had asked to come over at all.

He came up with several answers, but none of them were very convincing.


	5. Chapter 5

When he pushed the door open, he saw glass shards on the floor, red paint on the walls, furniture pushed over, and belongings scattered everywhere. The paint on the main wall of the living room read, “THIS IS WHAT YOU’RE ASKING FOR”. The letters dripped down the wall and spotted the carpet.

Darius turned toward him and uttered, “You need to leave.”

He could hardly fathom what he was seeing. A broken window typically implied that a kid had accidentally thrown their baseball too far. This was far worse. This wasn’t even vandalism, or a bad-mannered prank. This was a personal attack.

Instead of leaving, Garen took a cautious step forward and asked, “Who would have done this?”

“If you knew what’s best for you, you’d leave.”

“I’m not concerned with what’s best for me. I’m concerned with what’s best for you.”

There was a moment of silence then, until Darius’s fists cracked audibly at his sides, and Garen said, “Why is it so hard for you to accept help from someone who cares?”

“Because the world is filled with people like _this_ ,” he answered sharply, gesturing at his surroundings. “No one really cares. Not even you.”

He began to pick up the pillows that had been scattered askew and throw the ones that were still intact back onto the couch. Garen picked up a fallen lamp and replaced it on the side table, replying, “How can I convince you that I do?”

“You can’t, fuckhole.”

“I’m sick of your intolerable attitude.”

“Then don’t tolerate it.”

It took all of Garen’s willpower not to pick up the lamp again and hurl it across the room. There was an actual reason he forced himself to go through this - he was certain of that - but sometimes it was difficult to remember exactly what that reason was.

“The writing on the wall,” he said. “What does it mean?”

“Don’t know,” Darius replied, lackluster.

“Is there a reason-”

“No matter what you say, I’m not telling you anything about why this happened. If you insist on helping me clean up, then go right ahead, but do both of us a favor in the meantime and shut the hell up.”

It didn’t make sense to get any more angry, as much as Garen wanted to. If there ever was a time to build tolerance, this was it.

He stared at the words and tried to interpret them himself, but the only certain fact here was that Darius had pissed somebody off. Or possibly Draven had, but that seemed slightly less likely.

Over the course of half an hour they cleaned up the trash and glass shards and put everything back into position, but the red paint had dried fast enough that it wouldn’t budge no matter how hard Garen scrubbed it. The wall would need to be re-painted, and the window replaced. The TV was also missing. Garen considered asking if Darius would have the money for the necessary repairs, but decided against it for the time being. He had heard enough retaliatory animosity for the day.

On the other hand, he was surprised at how well Darius had taken it. He hadn’t gone on a rampage or even yelled, as many spoiled citizens of the modern era might have. He had simply gone to work fixing it, remaining only as rude and self-centered as his usual self.

Garen asked, “Are you still going to class?”

“Yeah, why wouldn’t I?”

He imagined Lux, or even himself, in the same position. Either one of them would have taken the rest of the day off to mourn their belongings, and their pride.

“I wish you would let me help you find out who did this.”

“I’ll never find out. It doesn’t matter. They’re all pieces of shit.”

“Who?”

Darius shot a glance that signalled he might have had actually had an answer, but instead he smirked and uttered, “The human race.”

Garen was silent for a moment, if only to let the statement sink in and incite in him simultaneously anger and disappointment, hate and longing and a dull sense of distress.

What if he could never get through? What if, after all this trying and tolerating and stepping completely out of his comfort zone just to get a _chance_ at understanding what went on in Darius’s head, he would find nothing there but the empty malice he so proudly displayed? Incurable.

He couldn’t believe that. Not for a second, or he would lose his mind thinking of how hard he’d tried, how hard he still hoped. He walked over to where Darius was sitting on the couch, holding a beer in one hand, head against the backrest with his eyes closed.

Garen sat beside him and leaned against him, hugging him, resting his head against Darius’s neck. He felt the chuckle in his throat. Then, to his utter surprise, an arm resting gently along his shoulders. “You’re the gayest straight boy I’ve ever met.”

“Fuck off,” Garen retorted.

Behind them the letters remained red and angry on the wall, and the uncharacteristic silence was deafening. For a few minutes, at least, those things didn’t matter. It was nice being able to sit like this together, not talking, not thinking about how little sense it made.

“Since there’s nothing to do here, I think I’ll go to an event the rugby team is doing,” Darius said, finishing off his beer and placing it on the side table.

“You play rugby?”

“You play football, which is the pussy version of rugby.”

Garen snorted. “Football has bigger guys and harder collisions. We have scrape protection, but in return we each get hammered daily by fifteen-hundred pounds of head-on force.”

“Fifteen-hundred?”

“You heard right.”

Darius smiled as he extracted his arm from around Garen’s shoulders and stood up. “Fine. You did your research. But just for the record, last season we had four sprained ankles, two concussions, and a fractured collarbone, on a 22-player team.”

“How does your team even last a season?”

“Our bench is almost as big as our field.”

Garen didn’t mention the fact that sprained ankles and concussions were just as common on the football team, if not more common. They, however, had enough benchwarmers - thirty-four, to be exact - for no one to even notice when a player or two, or seven, was missing.

It made sense that Darius would choose rugby over football. He wasn’t a social creature, but he also wasn’t the type to let himself blend into a crowd. He didn’t go out of his way to talk to people, but the way in which he didn’t gave him a reputation, and he knew it.

Garen followed him out of the apartment and peered through the broken window as Darius locked the door. It seemed pretty pointless, with a hole as big as that one, to attempt to secure the place from intruders. Perhaps everything of value had already been stolen anyways, in which case Darius had no reason to care.

“You’re not going to call the police?” he asked, as he glimpsed the red paint through the window and the thought finally occurred to him.

“I’d rather cut off my own hand than call the police for help.”

“That’s ridiculous. The police exist to help the community. What would you do if your brother got murd-”

“The police exist to terrorize minorities and take advantage of every shitheaded civilian who’s too afraid to stand up for himself,” Darius interrupted, turning to Garen with a dangerous look in his eyes. His voice had risen slightly. “What would I do if my brother got murdered? I would take revenge, and flee if I’m caught. I don’t need some corrupt government official to throw the fucker in jail, feed and house him for free for ten years, and then release him back into a world that hates him so he can break down and go murder somebody else.”

The air seemed to turn cold and stale around them, despite the morning sunlight. The most unsettling thing was not his troubling view of the police, or his lack of hesitance with regards to taking revenge. The most unsettling thing was his apparent understanding of what went on in a murderer’s mind.

“Is this why you’re in political science?” Garen asked, because it was all he could think of asking. He did not feel that Darius was dangerous - not unless provoked, in any case. He felt disoriented.

Darius nodded. “We’re governed by people who can’t tell their ass from their elbow. It makes me sick.”

Then he was off with an aura that screamed ‘don’t follow me’, so Garen didn’t. He decided to keep his mouth shut and head home.

* * *

Jarvan was sitting on the couch in the living room; Xin must have let him in. He jumped out of his seat and grasped Garen’s shoulders when he arrived.

“Where have you been?! The moment I watched you and meathead disappear around the corner, I thought to myself two things: either they’re going to find a good place to kill each other, or they’re going to find a good place to get laid.” He looked Garen up and down, smiling devilishly when his focus narrowed down to a particular mark on his friend’s neck. “And from the looks of it, you’re not dead.”

“Shouldn’t you be in class?”

“Foreign policy is not nearly as important as my best friend’s sex life… Although the topics may be distantly related.”

Garen shook his head at the other’s crooked attempt at a joke and moved past him to lean on the kitchen countertop. The fact that he would have to tell Jarvan what had happened was obvious; exactly _how much_ he wanted to tell was a different story.

“How’s it going with you and… Shyanne?” he asked, in a halfhearted attempt to postpone the subject.

“Shyvana. She’s fiery, but that’s besides the point,” Jarvan said, leaning expectantly on the kitchen bar across from Garen. “You skipped class to bone this guy.”

“And _you_ skipped class to hector me about it.”

“So you did?”

“In the nearest empty classroom,” Garen responded, and he found himself smiling about it. While Jarvan hooted joyously, he asked, “Do I win the most daring places competition?”

“Beat the back shelves of the library.”

“Damn.”

“You win, though, because it was Darius.”

Suddenly he wasn’t smiling anymore, and he only faintly realized it was because he didn’t think that was funny, and he didn’t think it was true. He remembered what he’d thought of Darius before all this, that he’d been judgmental and malignant, and he hated himself for it.

“Darius doesn’t deserve all the spite he receives,” he said. It was a start to redemption.

“Garen, I heard from you _every day_ for a _year_ about how bad that guy is.”

“I know,” he replied, and it made him sick to imagine it. To imagine Darius _with_ him after all of that, kissing the very same mouth that had berated him to anyone who would listen. It made him hesitant to ever kiss Darius again, not because his heart didn’t flutter to heaven every time he did, but because he was dishonest and vile and he didn’t deserve it. “I take it back.”

“Could I ask why?”

“Because he’s had more than his fair share of difficulties, and instead of asking for help, he tries to show everyone just how much he doesn’t need it.”

Perhaps Jarvan would have queried further if it weren’t for the tone of Garen’s voice, the solemnity in his expression. This was a private matter. Things had changed since Garen had confessed he was simply _attracted_ to him. One could be physically attracted to someone they hate, but not defend them like this.

“Someone vandalized his apartment,” Garen explained, answering one of many unspoken questions. “They stole everything of value and left a message on the wall: ‘This is what you’re asking for.’ Do you know anyone who would have done such a thing?”

Jarvan shook his head, surprised. “Not anyone I know, but I’d imagine that someone like Darius might wind up with a lot of unintentional enemies.”

“Intentional ones, too.”

“I’ll let you know if I hear anything. Jericho is in my military history class, unfortunately. I could bother him about it if you want. They’re friends, aren’t they?”

“You would do that?”

“Enduring a few hateful glares and biting words is a small price to pay to put a friend’s heart at ease.”

Garen smiled, but shook his head. “That’s alright. I think I need to look into this myself.”

There was a moment of silence between them as the television played in the background, turned on some romantic teen drama complete with love triangles and lots of underage alcohol obtained from who knows where; Garen could never understand why Jarvan always watched this crap.

“Hey, you seem a little down. Let’s take the rest of the day off and help set up the frat party,” Jarvan suggested merrily.

“I already skipped this morning.”

“You can bring a date, if you want.”

The statement could have passed as serious if Garen hadn’t looked up and caught Jarvan winking at him. They both knew that Darius would crash the party just by walking in, even if he did agree to coming. He could attend a party like Jayce’s due to the sheer amount of people that were there. In Garen’s experience, frat parties seemed to only welcome down-to-fuck sorority girls as guests.

“Real talk, though, how serious is this? You and Darius?”

“Hard to say. We’re not going to arrive at school holding hands, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Who would have thought that after all that antagonism, you two would end up together.”

“Jarvan,” Garen warned. “We are not together, and if you tell anyone we are, I might have to kill you.”

“Point taken. Let’s go.”

“You’re lucky I don’t have a quiz today,” he remarked, following Jarvan out to the car. At times like these he half-regretted joining a fraternity, because he didn’t enjoy the parties until he got drunk enough to hate himself in the morning. The part that he didn’t regret was being able to forget about things for awhile, to forget about the red paint on the wall, and the fact that he could no longer imagine a future with a pretty stay-at-home wife, which had always been the expected standard. That future seemed dull and meaningless.

He didn’t know what the future held for him, and it made him sick to think about it. To think about the mixed signals, the uncertainty, the prejudice he would face even if he did get what he wanted. And far more problematic than that, the pain that came along with the one he wanted. The sharp remarks, the unreadable eyes. The loneliness of not knowing or understanding, because Darius wouldn’t let him in.

Sometimes he wasn’t sure if it was worth it, but at the same time he couldn’t just let go. He cared. He couldn’t grasp exactly when or why he had started caring about this, but he did. Enough to keep him awake at night, wondering what went through the mind of someone who didn’t think the world was worth living for.

He wanted to be worth living for, even if nothing else was.

* * *

Darius didn’t show up to class the next day. It wouldn’t have been any cause for concern if not for the foreboding red letters still dripping down the wall of his living room. Sometimes people got sick or decided that attending wasn’t worth the extra hour of sleep that day. Quinn did it all the time. Probably about sixty percent of the time, now that Garen thought about it, and she still got away with a pretty decent grade.

So he restrained himself from worrying. At least until the second day passed, and the third, and then it was the weekend and he couldn’t stand waiting for another two days without finding out what was going on. He had sent one unanswered text and his pride wouldn’t allow him to send another one.

No one answered the door. It was five in the afternoon and the window was still gaping. His conscience told him that entering was a crime. His heart told him that not entering was unacceptable, mainly for his own sake. He reached his arm through, pulled the lock, and crawled inside.

Everything was as he had last seen it, if not a little messier, but that was no surprise. He peeked into Draven’s room to find a cologne-stinking haven covered in posters of porn stars and furnished with a vanity table instead of a desk. He looked into Darius’s room, and the smell was subtle and familiar, welcoming him despite the mess on the table and the unmade bed. It wouldn’t hurt to lay down, he thought. The party had kept him up until well into the morning. So he did, and he closed his eyes, and after a minute or so his heart rate had fallen back down to an ordinary level.

It jumped right back up again when he heard a key turn in the lock of the front door.

It was one of the brothers. It had to be, unless their key was stolen or replicated. The intruder had gone through the window. There was no reason to believe that he or she had obtained a key, unless of course Darius had been kidnapped and murdered. Garen hadn’t watched the news lately. Oh god, what if-?

Draven started humming a Britney Spears song as he traveled down the hallway. Garen rolled out of bed and met him perhaps a little too quickly at the doorway, because he screeched and ricocheted into the opposite wall before shooting his arm out to grip Garen’s throat.

Maybe it was just with the help of adrenaline, but he was far stronger than he looked.

“It’s… me,” Garen coughed out, prying at his fingers.

“Oh, shit,” Draven replied, retracting his arm. He had gone from screaming schoolgirl to savage killer faster than Garen had ever seen, and now he was scratching his head like nothing of note had happened. “C’mon, man, you scared the living crap out of me. Why are you here?”

“Why did you choke me?!”

“I thought you were a rapist or something! The door’s locked.” He paused to raise an eyebrow. “You know, I really wouldn’t blame you if you were, though.”

“If I were what?”

“Here to rape me. Good thing you already have my permission.”

Garen nearly choked again, this time on his own saliva, when Draven pushed him up against the hallway wall and placed a hand at his hip, where his shirt started. He grabbed the hand and flung it away without a second thought.

Sure, he found Draven attractive in his own right, but not in any more ways than his smooth skin, sharp eyes, and snarky smile, all of which were physical traits. And didn’t he care about his brother a little more than _this?_

“Draven,” he started, warningly.

“That’s right, say my name, baby.”

“What are you doing?”

“My brother won’t be home for a few days, so we don’t need to worry about getting caught.”

“Please get off me.”

The hand came back to inch under his shirt, the hips pressing harder. “Come on, sexy. Tell me all about you two. Tell me all the details of your… ‘school project’.”

“Get off of me!” Garen shouted, just as the front door opened and Darius walked in.

He stopped dead just past the threshold to stare.

“I was testing him,” Draven said, smiling innocently as he backed off. “He passed.”

Darius stepped forward, picked up the end table beside the couch, and hurled it toward Draven’s side of the hallway. Draven made it into his room just in time to dodge the table as it collided with the wall and clattered to the floor, surprisingly not broken.

“Remind me never to leave him alone with you,” Darius said, moving forward to place his hands exactly where he’d seen Draven’s, as if that would negate the fact that they’d been there at all, and kiss him harshly on the lips.

But the kiss could only distract him for so long from the bruises he’d noticed on Darius’s face, the red welts around his wrists that could have only been caused by handcuffs. He turned his head to break the kiss, gripping the other’s hands to examine them palm-up. “What happened to you?”

“Nothing happened to me.”

Garen grimaced, running his fingers along the blistered red lines. “It’s one thing to refuse an explanation. It’s another to lie when the evidence is right in front of me.”

“Does it make a difference?”

“It does.”

He was just standing there, his expression indifferent. He didn’t jerk his hands away or turn his cheek to hide the darkest bruise. He expected Garen not to care, or at least to pretend not to. He moved in again to grace his chapped lips along Garen’s jaw, to rest his hands on his hips and press their bodies close together.

“Darius, please.”

“Forget about it.”

“I will not ignore the fact that you’ve been beaten and arrested.”

“It’s not a big deal.”

“And I’m not a stranger who will take advantage and follow you blindly into bed. Stop treating me like one.”

The tension in his body became tangible all at once. He back away, turned around, and braced himself against the opposite wall, hanging his head. “I never should have allowed this to happen.”

“All I’m asking for is your trust. Have I not earned it?”

“I don’t owe you anything.”

He muttered ‘fuck’ under his breath, almost soft enough to be inaudible. The frustration was enough to ruin him. “What do I have to do to get through to you?”

“Stop bothering me about things that are none of your business.”

Garen grabbed him by the shoulder, turned him around, and slammed him against the wall. This _was_ his business. After all they had been through, after how much Garen had changed and sacrificed for him, he _deserved_ for this to be his business.

“Is this what you want?!”

He seized a fistful of hair and smashed their lips together, his other hand working at the front of Darius’s jeans. He broke away to yank his head back by the hair and look him in the eyes.

“This is what it is to feel nothing. This is what you’re asking of me.”

Darius kneed him in the groin, and he collapsed against the opposite wall. “Get out,” he muttered, his tone stark and emotionless, but his face told a different message. Disappointment.

Beneath the sheen of agony clouding Garen’s awareness and sending the contents of his stomach halfway up his throat, there was a faint realization of remorse. He could have done better than that. He could have kept his patience, stayed, and kissed those wounds instead of adding more.

It was so hard, trying to be supportive of someone without knowing a single thing about them besides their hatred of the world.

He staggered to his feet. “Please.”

“I never asked for your help.”

“Darius-”

“Get out.”

He leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes, waiting for the pain to subside enough to walk without wincing.

What could he have done, besides not losing his temper?

There was no point. He would never get through. Anger didn’t work, and he didn’t have enough patience to try longer than he already had. He was beginning to think that the frustration was more than it was worth.

Outside, the sun was setting. He kicked rocks down the sidewalk all the way home.


	6. Chapter 6

It felt like attending class with an ex-girlfriend, complete with all the challenges of acting cool, avoiding eye contact, and altering pace to enter and leave the classroom at different times. It was unpleasant especially because Garen didn’t _want_ it to be this way. All he had wanted was to stop feeling so much like he was fucking a stranger. He didn’t think that was an unreasonable request, by ordinary standards, but he supposed that this situation wasn’t exactly ordinary.

It was no surprise that Jarvan noticed the glum look on his face, and the effort he made to look away every time Darius so much as turned his head, even though he never turned it all the way around.

Outside, Jarvan asked, “Did something happen?”

Garen shook his head ‘no’ in such a way that said ‘yes, _everything_ happened, and now I’m sitting here watching the world as I know it crash down around me’.

“What happened?”

“He refuses to tell me anything. You know when he was absent last week? He came home with welts around his wrists and completely ignored my request for an explanation.”

“Welts?”

“He got arrested. Unless he decided to satisfy some sort of kink which involves beating him half to death.”

‘Half to death’ was an exaggeration, seeing as the bruises were minor enough to mostly heal over the weekend, but Garen was grumpy and Jarvan got the point.

“And it’s not just that, it’s everything,” Garen went on. “The only things I know about him are that he doesn’t have parents, he hates everything, and he’s in political science because he thinks our current system is full of shit.”

“He’s not going to get anywhere with a criminal record.”

“And that’s the type of thing he would probably think is a problem. The rules are there for a reason, but he doesn’t see it that way. Obviously why he went out and broke them, just after complaining about the corruption of the police.”

Jarvan had a solemn look on his face, quite unlike the sympathetic smile from a minute ago. After a short pause, he said, “Garen, I’m not sure if you should continue pursuing this.”

“What?”

“I didn’t see any problem with it before. Just a bit of fun with an unorthodox attraction. But after hearing all this and seeing how it affects you, I’m afraid of you getting involved in something you shouldn’t be.”

Garen’s heart turned to stone in his chest. His jaw locked.

“What happens when _you_ come home with welts around your wrists, because you chose to follow him?” Jarvan asked.

“What makes you think I would allow that to happen?”

“You don’t speak of him as you would of Katarina, as though he’s just a casual relation. You speak of him like you love him.”

The first thought that appeared in Garen’s mind was that it wasn’t possible. This had only started a couple of weeks ago, and even after a couple of weeks they hardly knew each other at all. Certainly, it frustrated him that that was the case, but wouldn’t that frustrate _anyone_ who was still interested after a couple of weeks?

“You have nothing to worry about,” he replied, and as he did he decided he wouldn’t bring up anything that could make Jarvan worry, because there was no point. He didn’t understand.

“Are you going to see him again?”

At this point they had been standing outside the lecture hall for a good amount of time, exchanging dialogue while Garen examined the laces of his shoes and Jarvan stared at him just as intently.

“Probably.”

“Please be careful.”

Garen gripped the door handle, muttering before he entered, “He’s not a psychopath.”

But he wasn’t sure how convinced he was of his own argument, which was that Darius simply had different beliefs that, even if they weren’t _right_ , were justified by his personal experiences. He still had feelings. He still had a heart, and a conscience. His disapproval of being treated heartlessly was proof of that.

* * *

He arrived there at sunset with a bucket of white paint in hand. The window was still gaping, and through it, he could hear Draven ranting about who _should_ have won _American Idol_ , which he must have been playing on someone’s laptop, since the television was gone. When Darius answered the door, he said, “Are you here to act like a complete idiot?”

“No. I’m here to ask you to dinner. Anywhere you want. My treat.”

“I don’t do fancy dinner dates. Take me to a dive bar instead.”

“I don’t turn twenty-one until March.”

“I know a place that never checks. You could pass for twenty-five anyway.”

Garen thought it was a strange idea, but he wasn’t about to complain. He held out the paint bucket. “I also got this, so I can help you repaint the living room when we get back.”

“Is this you apologizing?”

“It’s the least I can do.”

After an entire weekend of trying to convince himself he didn’t care and he shouldn’t be involved with this anyway, hearing Jarvan tell him so made him want to do exactly the opposite. External influence had a funny way of clarifying one’s true beliefs; Garen _actually_ cared enough to reject the notion of leaving Darius alone the moment he heard it expressed verbally. If it hadn’t been that important, he would have stuck to the status quo.

This was too valuable to let go of, dangerous or not. This feeling of metamorphosis, quite unlike the passivity of most relationships. This remarkable desire Garen experienced each time Darius met his eyes or touched his skin.

As he did now, stepping forward and placing his hand along Garen’s jaw, pressing a kiss to the surface of his lips with a gentleness he’d never exhibited before. He struck a match in Garen’s stomach and sent a breeze through to extinguish it just as quickly. He set the paint down inside the door, closed it, and headed toward the parking lot, not offering a word of explanation.

He drove a run-down black pickup truck that was at least two decades old and must have been worth less than a thousand dollars. It sounded like Godzilla when it started up, but the Guns N’ Roses album in the cassette player drowned out all the screeching and spluttering with a different kind of noise. Garen spent a good portion of the ride silently gawking at the fact that this vehicle still had its original audio player installed, and that Darius had actually bothered tracking down a cassette to put in it. He spent the other portion clenching his fist, anxiously waiting for the car to combust with them inside it.

But they made it there intact, and Garen was surprised to walk into ‘The Dirty Cellar’ to find a cozy little tavern with a pool table, a single bartender donning a bandana on his head and a waist-length gray beard, and a line of dimly lit dining booths against one wall. It was sparsely populated, and most of the inhabitants were passed out on the counter. Perhaps in a few hours the more rowdy crowds would start to come out for a drink.

When they sat down at a booth, a middle-aged woman with short blonde hair, a black apron, and a nose piercing walked over from the pool table and leaned against the side of the table, one hand on her hip. “How are you boys doing tonight?”

“Fine,” Garen answered, out of courtesy.

“Good. Anything to eat or drink? Menu’s behind the salt n’ pepper shakers.”

“Wings special and a pitcher of beer,” Darius answered. Before Garen could reach for the menu, he added, “It feeds two. Unless you’re in the mood for something else.”

“Sounds fine to me.”

“Alright, wings special and a pitcher of beer, will that be all for now?”

“Yep.”

Garen looked around, and asked, “Do you come here often?”

“Every few weeks.”

It was the sort of place where almost anyone could feel comfortable. This must have been only the second or third time Garen had gone to an actual bar, and he didn’t feel out of place despite being two months underage. The booths were tall, and the music loud enough to drown out most of the voices on the other side of the room.

“I, uh…” Garen began, choosing his words carefully. He had thought about this for a long time before coming, and he was still felt unsure. “I want you to know that you don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to. I won’t lie and say that it’s not frustrating, but… that gives me no right to disrespect you like I did.”

Darius stared at him from across the table, unreadable. “You’re the only person who’s ever bothered to apologize for sticking your nose in my personal business.”

“I keep trying to prove to you that I care, but I’ve been doing it wrong. It’s your choice to tell me or not. I should support you either way.”

He smiled.  _ Actually _ smiled, and as he did he turned his eyes downward. His voice didn’t change. “Everyone acts offended that I don’t have my entire life on public display.”

Just then the woman came back with two tall glasses and a pitcher of beer. When Darius filled his glass and downed it all in one go, Garen wondered what it was he was so eager to forget about, but reminded himself not to ask.

“Is there anything you want to know about  _ me _ ?” he asked instead.

“What, you think you’re interesting?”

“Dull as a rock.”

“I doubt that.”

“Ask me something, then.”

Although his intentions had been practical, he promptly realized that he felt like a high schooler for starting a game which could be so easily abused. It was too late to take it back.

“What’s your family like?” Darius asked, which was a relief.

“I have a little sister who’s studying physics at our school. My father is in city government and my mother is the vice-president of a cosmetics company. They weren’t home often growing up, especially my mother. When they were around they were loving, but strict, since they wanted us to grow up as picture-perfect upper class citizens.”

He paused to wonder again at how quickly the contents of the pitcher were depleting, with little help on his part. The blonde woman brought over a large tray of chicken wings and told them to holler at the bartender, whose name was Reginald, if they needed anything else. 

“I’m surprised you’re not a complete douchebag,” Darius remarked.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Garen asked, but Darius just snorted and shoved a wing in his mouth.

Then he asked, “What’s your biggest turn-on?”

Garen felt the heat rise to his cheeks faster than he could regret it. He had to answer. This was a demonstration of trust.

“Domination.”

“Whose domination?”

“Mine.”

“Have you ever been tied up?”

“No.”

“Blindfolded?”

“No.”

“Lashed, bitten, bruised? Teased until you’re begging for mercy, with my hand around your neck so you can barely breathe?”

“No.”

He could feel the question coming as though he were tied back and blindfolded at that very moment, and Darius was leaning toward him with his fingers in his tightening pants. The room temperature had risen to a hundred degrees. 

“Would you like to be?”

“Yes.”

Then they were on opposite sides of the table again - in fact, they had never moved - but the temperature was the same. Garen picked up his glass and chugged the remainder.

“How many partners have you had before me?”

“Four, maybe five.”

“All female?”

“Yes.”

“Why do you keep coming back for me?”

“I just do.”

“Why?”

“Because I like you.”

“Is it me you like, or the idea of my dick in your ass?”

At this point Garen rested his elbow upon the table and his chin upon his hand, an almost comical trepidation knitting his brows. Perhaps by guarding his mouth he would somehow avoid having to answer. Both options were true to some degree, and Darius would decide upon the one he wanted to hear.

“C’mon, Crownguard. I didn’t think you were so shy.”

“Both,” he answered.

“Is that so?”

“Are you surprised?”

They both spent a moment focused on the wings they were eating. Then Darius looked at him and said, “I’m not the type of guy anyone would have a crush on.”

“How would you know? You’re too intimidating to give anyone the chance to tell you.”

“Apparently not to you.”

“I’m not afraid of the consequences.”

Darius stood up suddenly. He rounded the table and was on top of Garen before he had any chance to react, knee pressing sharply into Garen’s groin and hand holding his throat up against the backboard. The small space between booth and table kept them uncomfortably close together. Garen raised his hands to Darius’s forearm but did not fight back. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the bartender staring at them.

“You’re a dirty fucking slut,” Darius sneered, tightening his grip just slightly. “And if you think that anything good will come of interacting with me, you’re in for a rude awakening.”

If Garen hadn’t been out of his mind with lust at that point, he might have realized that there was a degree of genuine belief tacked onto Darius’s raunchy tone. But his groin was aching in more ways than one, and the shortened supply of air prevented his brain from focusing on anything more than that.

“We’re going home. Cover the bill.”

Darius let go of him and walked straight to the door, earning several bewildered stares from other bar-goers along the way. Garen watched him as well, but he was thinking of how tight his clothes were against his body and how dangerous he could be when he was mad.

_ Hot damn. _

* * *

“Get out, Draven.”

The youngest brother was lounging on the couch reading a book whose title Garen couldn’t discern. He threw his head back dramatically. “What, you guys can’t just keep your voices down?”

“Draven.”

“Alright, alright,” he muttered, marking his page and grabbing a jacket from the hallway closet. He wiggled his eyebrows at Garen on the way out.

Darius held his hand out behind him, turning his head so that his profile was visible without making eye contact. His fingers were thick and coarse, and unexpected. Ordinarily he avoided physical contact until Garen offered it first, or until they were having full-out sex.

In his bedroom, he led Garen to the edge of his bed and sat him down there, standing in-between his legs with their hands still touching. There was something far different about this, compared to last time. Last time was unbridled lust from both of them. They’d already be half-naked on their backs if that was the case.

“Are you ready?” he asked, his eyes calm and sincere, and then it made sense. The dirty talk at the bar didn’t change the fact that Garen hadn’t been fucked before. And it was true that he still felt apprehensive about it all.

It was the strangest sensation, having someone you thought of not just _more_ than everyone else but _differently_ from everyone else, differently even from his past partners, who had been just like everyone else in that their lives appeared to be just as put together, that they made things easy but not necessarily better, that they were just casual conversations and fun nights out, instead of people who changed your life and your views and taught you so many new things that your world wasn’t the same as it once was.

It was strange not having to think about whether he was ready or not, because the answer came so naturally. Like a scene in a movie that was already scripted the moment they crossed paths, except neither of them had known it.

He nodded.

Darius kissed him, pressing forward until Garen was on his back, stopping only to pull Garen’s shirt off and move downward. He kept going, leaving a trail of warmth in his wake, until he had Garen’s pants undone and was creating that heavenly feeling again, one hand at the base of Garen’s cock and the other gripping his hip, keeping it still against the sheets as he bobbed.

Garen was glad that Draven wasn’t here to hear him. He didn’t think he could keep his mouth shut if he tried, especially considering what was coming.

What came closer when Darius paused to finish undressing him and push his thighs forward, when he felt his tongue travel down the length of his cock and still downward to press at his entrance, and he felt his breath hitch in his throat.

What came ever closer when the warmth left and Darius stood up to get something from the bedside table, sit down between Garen’s legs, and coat his finger with it. Here he was with his supposed worst enemy, completely exposed. Here he was, vulnerable, and by choice.

“How many times have you done this before?” he asked, and he was too uneasy to notice the subtle sound of desperation in his own voice.

“Sex? Plenty, since I’ve been in college.”

“No, I mean… Preparing someone.”

“Never. But I know what it felt like my first time, and you can shoot me if I’d ever let you feel like that.”

Garen blinked in surprise, but reminded himself not to ask no matter how badly he wanted to, no matter how it frustrated him to willingly leave these secrets buried, how it pained him to remain so far away from someone who meant so much to him.

He looked up at Darius, who had moved to lean over him, and thought he didn’t seem angry anymore. Even with his brows furrowed, his lips were parted and his eyes focused, the cloudy green a thin line around his pupils, which were normally small and piercing.

Garen felt the first intrusion and gripped the arm that was braced beside his head, a defense mechanism. He tried to relax but his heart was pounding so fast that he barely felt the physical intrusion; instead he felt the weight of his own mind sending spasms through all his muscles, pushing air out of his lungs faster than they could bring more in.

He wasn’t afraid. He wanted this. It was his body rebelling against this brand new experience which he hadn’t even _considered_  let alone imagined for the past twenty years of his life; it didn’t matter how badly he wanted it now.

Darius said his name, and he was faintly aware of not having anything inside him anymore, just the warmth of Darius’s thighs against the back of his own, the focused eyes searching him for an answer.

“Is this what you want?” he asked.

“Yes.”

There was a pause as Darius watched him, scanning for honesty where there seemed to be primal fear.

“The moment you say stop, I stop.”

“Just do it,” Garen said, placing a hand along his jaw, the other gripping his side. “I want this.”

Darius stood up again, this time to unclothe himself, and when he kneeled down between Garen’s legs again he leaned onto his forearm, his cock pressing against Garen’s stomach, and pushed his finger back inside.

This time Garen felt it, and it felt _good_ , and he let out a quick, low moan and pulled Darius closer to him, gripping the skin of his back as the finger pressed into him. In and out, slowly, then quickly, then another, and it wasn’t painful, just tight.

“Are you ready?” he asked again, his voice low and raspy beside Garen’s ear, which tied his lower stomach into another knot.

“Yes.”

Darius paused to apply a condom and coat it with lube, and then he leaned forward and pressed inside, and there was a dull pain and a sensation of fullness, a pleasant friction, a need for more.

“It feels good,” he said, breathing hard, after a moment of waiting had passed.

It felt better when his hips began to rock, and with every thrust the pain faded further into the backdrop of pleasure, and Garen hardly had time to wonder why _everyone_ didn’t try this because he was so busy not controlling his mouth.

The headboard was rocking against the wall and he hadn’t stopped moaning. He was clutching Darius’s hips, demanding harder, deeper, _more_ , it felt so _good_. The pleasure was a fire that started deep inside and spread outward, pinching his stomach, seizing his muscles, stealing his breath. He felt a convulsion overtake him, his back arching, his legs shaking, and everything that existed outside of the two of them disappeared.

Darius slowed down and stopped thrusting, breathing hard as he looked down at Garen, holding his quivering thighs. His cum was all over himself, and Darius hadn’t even touched him.

“I didn’t think you would like it _that_ much.”

Garen could hardly breathe. “Neither did I.”

He pulled out and collapsed on his back beside Garen, closing his eyes.

When Garen rolled over he winced from a pain that hadn’t been there just seconds before, or at least, it hadn’t been noticeable behind all the other feelings. “Ouch.”

“Sore?”

“Apparently so.”

“That may last a day or two.”

“Shit,” he said, but in the end he didn’t really care, considering he had just had the best sex of probably his entire life. He wrote himself a mental reminder to Google how one could possibly orgasm from anal penetration alone, and how in the hell it felt so much better than the usual.

They were quiet until they caught their breath. Darius was thinking about everything. Garen wasn’t thinking about anything. He could have fallen asleep in minutes if he had been left alone, and woken up on a proverbial cloud, no morning coffee required.

“Do you want to know something about me?” Darius asked.

Garen stared at him, but his eyes remained closed, his expression unreadable. “Yes.”

“I was four years old when I was left on the doorstep of an orphanage with my brother in my arms. I didn’t understand shit back then, so of course I wouldn’t have known that my parents weren’t coming back for us. They kept all the kids separated by age groups, so whenever Draven and I were separated I would sneak out of my room at night and see him. One time a couple tried to adopt Draven and not me. I wanted him to do it, but he wouldn’t stop crying, so we snuck out the morning he was supposed to be picked up and lived in the alley behind the library until I was old enough to get a job. The librarian didn’t know, and she liked us so much that she let us keep our favorite books and attend the college prep workshops for free. I worked really hard to provide what I could for us, and teach myself and Draven everything that we needed to get into college. Here we are.”

It was much worse than Garen had imagined. He realized with stark lucidity that he was privileged and utterly naive.

“He’s way smarter than I am. He was the librarian’s favorite,” he added, but his tone was one of pride rather than envy.

He turned onto his side, away from Garen, signalling that that was the end of that, and if Garen tried to ask any questions about it he would never share a personal story again.

Garen got up to use the restroom, turned the light off, and crawled back into bed. He buried his face in the nape of Darius’s neck and held him as tight as he could until he fell asleep.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait, my lovely readers... In return, here is a long, turbulent chapter. <3

In the morning Garen remembered that he was supposed to take the day off to see his parents, who were on a business trip relatively close-by, and Lux always came early to pick him up for things like these. He got dressed and leaned halfway onto the bed to kiss Darius on the forehead, but when he pulled away, Darius was awake.

“I have to go. I’ll come back tonight and help you paint the wall then.”

“Why do you have to leave _now?”_

“I’m actually going to see… my parents. It was planned a while back,” he answered, feeling glum the moment before mentioning his parents, which was the same moment he remembered the story from last night.

But Darius wasn’t bothered by that. He was bothered by the fact that Garen was leaving so soon. He grunted unhappily and closed his eyes.

“Thank you for last night,” Garen said, kissing him on the lips this time, but Darius didn’t kiss back. Garen was in too much of a hurry to notice.

* * *

Lux was arriving at the doorstep the exact moment that Garen turned the corner into view. She turned around when she heard footsteps, smiled mischievously, and said, “Where have _you_ been, big bro?”

“At, uh, a friend’s,” he responded, moving past her to unlock the door.

“You were with Kat, weren’t you?”

“What? No, I wasn’t-”

Suddenly he realized that it would have been _far_ more advantageous to say that he had been at Kat’s, but Lux was already gasping at him as though he had let loose some sort of scandal.

“Where were you?”

“I told you, I was with a friend.”

Inside, he set his backpack down against the side of the couch in the living room, turned on the television, and served two glasses of water from the fridge.

“You’re seeing someone _else!”_ she exclaimed.

“I need to shower. Then we can leave.”

“We’re not leaving until you tell me!”

Garen closed the bathroom door and cursed himself. There was no way out of this one now.

Though, he didn’t necessarily have a problem with telling Lux, since she was respectful enough to keep her family’s secrets to herself. Not to mention she would finally stop shoving Katarina onto him as though they were all pre-ordained by fate to become one family.

However, he would be sharing two new secrets rather than one, and he couldn’t predict how Lux would take the first one because he could never figure out if she occasionally made out with girls at parties because she thought it was fun or because she actually liked them.

When he emerged from his bedroom, dressed and ready to go, she was sitting at the counter on her phone. She said, “Spill.”

“I will, in the car.”

“You promise?”

“On my honor.”

She giggled as she slid off the barstool and headed outside. “Like you have any of that.”

They both knew he did; in fact, he had an inordinately high level of honor, which had caused him all throughout elementary school to be labeled the school snitch. It had become much more difficult to snitch on ill-behaving students over the years, namely due to the decreasing number of fucks that faculty gave, which is why he had switched to personally harassing ill-behaving students instead.

He thought it wasn’t _all_ that bad of a habit. It had led him to Darius, after all.

“You gonna tell me or what?” Lux asked, since they had been on the road for two minutes and Garen hadn’t said a word.

“First of all,” Garen said, staring out the window. “I’m bisexual.”

There she was with the expected gasp, and shortly afterward, “So it was a _guy!”_

“You know Darius?”

“No. Way.”

“It’s Darius.”

“Darius, as in, the Darius you’ve been complaining about since that oral presentation last fall? You’re kidding.”

“I’m not kidding.”

He would have added that he had been seeing Darius for a couple of weeks now, but he didn’t think she would approve of him not having told her until now.

“Holy shit,” she said. “Are you gonna tell Mom and D-”

It was a green light. He didn’t see the car approaching from the right side of the intersection until it was right next to him, a shiny red blur in the corner of his eye, moving way too fast where it shouldn’t have been moving at all.

Then the window was shattered, the car was flipping, Lux was screaming, and something hurt _bad_ for the split second before the world turned black.

* * *

He woke up alone to the small, steady beeps of the heart monitor. His right arm was in a cast from knuckles to shoulder, and there was a dull ache in the back of his head. One of the nurses passing by the window entered his room and said, “Finally awake? How do you feel?”

“Groggy. How long have I been out?”

“Five days.”

That explained why no one was here waiting for him. Unless…

“What about my sister? Luxanna Cr-”

“She got out of the crash unharmed. She slept here the first night, even after your parents left, but she said she had to leave for midterms.”

He smiled in relief, watching as the nurse detached the heart monitor and adjusted several other nearby apparatuses. If they had gotten away from a collision like that with only one broken arm between the two of them, they had been incredibly lucky.

“Could I make a call?” he asked.

“Sure thing. Just let me get that arm in a sling and I’ll lead you out to the telephone.”

* * *

 Lux picked up on the first ring, sounding incredibly exasperated. “Hello?”

“Hey, it’s m-”

“ _Garen!_ I swear to god if you _ever_ forget your seatbelt again _I will kill you!”_

He laughed, even though the situation wasn’t funny. He always buckled when _he_ was driving.

“You could have died! Do you know how many people are killed in car accidents every y-”

“Lux, are you going to come visit to lecture me in person, or-?”

“Right, I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

Then she hung up, and the nurse escorted him back to his room, where she told him that the doctor would be in shortly to debrief him on the details.

As he tried to get used to the feeling of having a completely immobile, constricted, aching limb sitting in front of his chest, he wondered how he was going to manage school for the coming weeks without the ability to write. More importantly, he wondered what Darius had thought of him the evening following the crash, when he had promised to come back.

Lux came in about half a minute after the doctor did, but she seemed to already know everything he had to say, so she sat fidgeting impatiently in the visitor’s chair until he was finished.

The broken arm would take anywhere from three to ten weeks to heal, so Garen would need to come in regularly to have it checked. He had also suffered some minor brain damage, which explained why he had been asleep for five days, and also why it felt like there was a lead weight pressing down on his skull. However, the doctor didn’t foresee it causing any negative long-term effects.

He would have to stay hospitalized for one more night to ensure that he was stabilized, but fortunately the hospital had just been equipped with a set of iPads for patients, so he would have something to keep himself occupied.

Lux stayed for several more hours. First she continued her lecture where she had left off, explaining that _she_ had been alright because she had been on the opposite side of the collision with her seatbelt on, while Garen had gotten his arm crushed and subsequently been thrown around the inside of the vehicle as it flipped. She assured him that it was that stupid Mazda’s fault for running a red light, but that it was also Garen’s fault for _not having his fucking seatbelt on._

She talked to him about everything Mom and Dad were up to, and that they were sorry they couldn’t stay longer to be there when he woke up, but that they would try to do a proper visit sometime soon. With their schedules, he doubted that would happen, no matter how sincere they were when they said it.

She talked about how she had met Jayce at that party, and how mysterious and charming he had been, and that they had gone on two wonderful dates since then. He sure did sound like Gatsby at this point, and Lux, by a stroke of chance, had ended up as Nick.

Then she asked him about Darius, and he evaded the questions with vague, generic answers until she promised to wring every detail out of him _later_ and left to study, leaving him his cellphone as she went.

There were fifteen texts from Jarvan and two from Darius. The latter two read:

_Nice of you to show up._

_Did you get eaten by vampires?_

It was difficult learning to text with one hand - and his left one, on top of that - but he managed it by resting his phone on his thigh and pressing letters one at a time. A few times it slid off and typed a bunch of inconvenient garble which was not worth the effort it took to erase.

_I got into a car accident, but im ok aside from a broken arm._

_Apology not accepted._

_Seriously?? &4l_

_Was my statement unclear?_

_Was my excuse inadequate?_

_Why are you taking so long to reply?_

_My arweglhi; is broken_

_You’re drunk._

_I got hit by a car. Im sorry._

He didn’t reply.

_What can I do to make it up to you?_

Originally he had thought about taking a picture of himself in the hospital room with a broken arm and sending that as proof, but then he decided he was pissed off and never sent it.

* * *

Darius’s apartment was the first place he went after being released, right after taking a shower at home, if only so that he could prove he actually _did_ have a broken arm and hadn’t been drunkenly fabricating an alibi. He was still pissed off.

The door opened only halfway, and Darius stood defensively in the crack with the clear message that Garen wasn’t invited. He had new bruises - one near his temple and another on his cheek, accompanied by a small red scratch.

“Do you believe me now?” He gestured at his broken arm.

“I already checked the news,” Darius answered sullenly.

“Then why are you still being an asshole about it?”

He didn’t say anything, just stared at Garen as though he wouldn’t get the chance to in a very long time. Then he tried to close the door, but Garen pushed it, and they fought against each other until Garen stuck his crippled right arm in the doorway, and Darius was forced to stop.

“You obviously don’t hate me enough to re-break my broken arm,” Garen said, pushing the door open to step inside. “So what the hell is your problem?”

“You shouldn’t enter someone’s house without permission.”

“I could’ve _died,_ and you’re still holding a grudge about me for not showing up that night.”

“That’s not what the fucking problem is.”

“Then what is it?”

Darius had turned his back and was walking forward as though he were going to abandon this conversation and barricade himself in his room. He had one hand in his hair; his body was tense.

“Then what is it, Darius?!”

“Don’t yell at me.”

“Are you going to tell me, or are you going to hide yourself from someone who cares about you just like you’ve been doing all along, thinking that it will make things better instead of worse?”

“Get the hell out of my apartment.”

“No! I can stand not being told what those bruises on your face are from or why you got arrested; I can endure that for as long as it takes for you to confide in me. But I will not endure being shut out of your life completely without at least hearing a reason.”

He sat down at the kitchen bar and buried his head in his hands, clutching frustratedly at his own hair. It seemed for a moment that even he didn’t know what to do with himself, that he had finally broken down, that Garen was actually getting somewhere.

Then Darius started speaking, and Garen almost regretted it, not because of what Darius said but because of what it felt like to hear him say it.

“Everyone I ever cared about… has been taken from me. Even Draven. Draven was _almost_ taken. And he would have been much better off if he had.”

His voice was much weaker than Garen had ever heard it, and much sadder, but also much more real.

“You told me you could’ve died, and it made me realize that you’re temporary. Even if something else doesn’t take you from me, someday you’ll take yourself and find someone better. So just… do me a favor and leave now.”

Hearing him say this - it felt like dying.

It felt like walking into a room only to look down and realize that your entire chest had been removed, and that the one you loved was sitting behind the trigger. It felt like looking into their eyes and seeing that they hadn’t wanted to do it, that someone else had forced them into believing this was the only way.

It felt like wanting revenge more than anything you had ever wanted in your entire life, but not having the physical ability to do anything besides collapse and die.

It felt like this because Darius wanted him to leave forever, even after all the time he had spent trying to convince Darius that he meant more to him than that. It felt like a problem that could never be solved, and it wasn’t either of their faults. It was the fault of the universe for inflicting too much suffering for one soul to handle. It wasn’t fair. It made Garen so _angry._

But he wasn’t ready to give up.

“I promise I’m not leaving,” he said softly, seating himself on the stool beside Darius and scooting close enough to wrap his one functioning arm around him.

There was no answer, only the scuffling of fabric as Darius sunk further into himself, willing himself unsuccessfully to disappear.

“I’ve had one girlfriend, and that was in twelfth grade,” Garen said. “We broke up after graduation. Katarina might have been one, but she never allowed me to talk about it with her. Even then, I only asked because our relationship was confusing, not because I felt anything more for her than physical attraction. All of my other sexual encounters have been one night stands from parties. You are the only one I ever came back for by choice. And you are the only one I’ve ever felt so strongly about.”

“I can’t take the risk,” Darius muttered, almost inaudibly beneath his barricade.

“You take it for Draven. You stay with him.”

“Draven needs me. Since I didn’t force him to go with that family, I owe him the best life I can give him.”

It hurt to be reminded of the likely possibility that Darius wouldn’t be living if not for having a dependent. It hurt because the thought of Darius not existing was so unpleasant as to be almost inconceivable. To return to the daily routine, except without the motivation of having someone to beat nor someone to love. To go through life knowing that he had had the chance to save someone who didn’t deserve to die, and failed.

It hurt even having to _think_ about it.

He hugged Darius tighter, and said, “I need you too.”

“Don’t bullshit me.”

“Just give me one night. Let me stay tonight, and make your choice in the morning. That’s all I ask of you.”

They both knew that one night was worth far more than just a collection of hours. One night could turn the entire world on its side. Darius knew it, and everything in his rational mind fought against it, but still he held onto his last sliver of hope.

“Fine,” he said, raising his head. Garen moved to kiss him with all the desperation of a person who’s just had his entire chest blown out and stitched back in. His slung arm was shoved against Darius and it hurt, but it didn’t matter. He wanted to be as close as possible until the countdown reached zero.

* * *

It was midnight, but it felt more like the final dawn before the apocalypse.

It was hot even with the covers thrown off, since the window couldn’t be opened unless they wanted the entire community to hear. The sheets were spotted and crumpled where they had been grabbed. Garen was on his back, aching from the past several rounds, and Darius was beside him staring with uncharacteristic interest, a soft, calm expression, a thinly veiled ambiance of affection on his face.

He closed his eyes and pressed his cheek into Garen’s shoulder.

Maybe, under ordinary circumstances, Garen would have said something. He always found himself with things to say, when he was with the right people. He was happy, when he was with the right people - and expressive. He was himself.

Tonight that was impossible. The happiness - ephemeral. There’s no way to stop the apocalypse.

But there are ways to delay it.

“Would you take me to your hometown?” Garen asked, turning his head. “If it’s alright to call it that.”

“Why the hell would you want to go there?”

He wasn’t entirely sure why he wanted to. It was a place to spend time that would otherwise be wasted on slumber. School tomorrow didn’t matter. School forever didn’t matter, if he had to spend it pretending not to look at Darius as though he had lost something really, really important.

“You don’t have to take me to the library, if you don’t want to,” he said. “I just want to see what type of place it was.”

“It’s a place for dirt-poor dreamers and capitalist trash.”

“Let me see for myself.”

Darius grunted as though he were amused. “I grew up in Noxon.”

“The big city about an hour north?”

It was one of those cities that everyone knew about, but he had never actually been there himself. He had always stayed pretty close to home, as a child, and he had only recently begun to realize how sheltered he was.

“Can we go there?” he asked again, since Darius hadn’t answered.

“I thought you would forget about that stupid idea once I told you where it was.”

“My only concern is the possibility of your car exploding on the way there.”

“My car is fine,” Darius said, standing up to pull on some fresh jeans from the closet, leaving the previous ones strewn on the floor exactly where he had left them several hours ago. It seemed that the typical routine was to let everything pile up for a week or so, clean up the entire pile at once, and repeat, which seemed dreadfully inefficient to Garen, but he hadn’t bothered saying anything about it yet.

Maybe he never would, if he was never to come back here again.

He sat up, watching as Darius pulled on a black shirt. Hell. They were always too tight.

“This isn’t a charity show,” Darius remarked, staring right back at him. Garen pushed himself to the edge of the bed and looked up at him as they met each other, all lips and roaming fingers. This instinct to touch was starting to feel like an addiction.

“Put on your clothes before I change my mind about going.”

Garen did. They got in the beaten-down black truck and listened to Axl Rose pour his heart out as they sped down the empty highways, a little too fast for Garen’s comfort. Darius only laughed when he complained, so he glued his head back against the seat and gripped the dashboard for dear life until, about forty minutes later, they pulled into a Noxon parking structure, paid the fee, and parked.

Outside, the buildings stretched up to touch the sky, and the streets were lit for miles. Turn in one direction and look up toward a mall of restaurants and office high-rises, the epitome of professional luxury; turn in another and gaze upon a selection of decrepit gas stations and convenience stores riddled with thugs. Garen had never seen anything like it.

They started walking.

There weren’t many people out at this hour, but occasionally Garen would see a businessman striding out of the large double doors of an office building or a homeless person curling up in their blankets on the side of the street. That was the type of thing he had only seen before in movies; he caught himself staring and felt strangely guilty, while Darius’s gaze remained straight ahead. He had seen this all before.

He had lived it before.

They came upon a park with a wide path winding through the center of the grass. There were old-fashioned yellow lamps following the length of the path, along with occasional benches, all the way to a children’s playground, a covered picnic area, and a gated basketball court with a tiny set of bleachers chained to the ground outside. There was a shopping cart next to one of the tables in the picnic area, and upon further inspection, another bundle of blankets resting on the nearest seat.

It was unreal to think that so many people had it this bad, and jarring to watch Darius walk past, still looking straight ahead, as though these people were ordinary aspects of the environment rather than horrifying examples of real-life hardship.

Always, in Garen’s mind, people had lived in two-story homes which lined the streets of the neighborhood, with tables set by mom every night and backyard pools to swim in during the summer. Life’s hardships had been having to do chores on a Friday night or losing the most important football game of the season.

When Darius had told him that he’d lived in the alley behind the library, it had still been some kind of fantasy - a story that took shape in romanticized movie frames, rather than in long nights of shivering in the cold city breeze, a ceaselessly growling stomach, second after agonizing second of trying to find some sort of hope without even a roof to block the rain when it came. No mom to set the table. There wasn’t even a table to set. There was nothing.

“Draven liked this playground when he was little,” Darius said. “But he was always making other kids cry. Parents would point at him and whisper about the ‘demon child’. He was completely oblivious until one of his friends told him that his mom thought he was the Devil incarnate, at which point he started doing it on purpose.”

He walked past the playground to the basketball court, squatting down beside the bleachers and reaching underneath the lowest step as though he were searching for something.

“You should have seen the mom’s face when he grinned at her and tilted his head like he was possessed.”

He pulled out an old basketball which must have been wedged in the dirt beneath the bleachers, examining it for a moment as though he were surprised it was still there.

“Can you shoot?”

“Yeah,” Garen said, feeling not quite himself.

“How well?”

“I can make it from halfcourt in a couple of tries.”

Darius climbed to the top step of the bleachers, which were located on one corner of the court. He shot for the furthest hoop. The ball flew over the gate, across the entire court, straight through the hoop, and bounced one pathetic time before resting. “Whole court, first try,” he said. “I haven’t played on any other court.”

He looked at Garen, who was stealing another glance at the homeless man sleeping at the picnic table.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m sorry, I’m… it’s nothing.”

Darius followed the direction of his glance, watched him for a moment, and then jumped down, grabbed his hand, and walked, leaving the flat basketball where it was in the center of the court. He likely wouldn’t be coming back here again, so there was no point in hiding it anymore.

“Approximately eighty-two thousand people are homeless in this city every night. Draven and I weren’t anything special, except for being young and orphaned.”

Garen tried not to imagine it. He focused on gripping Darius’s hand.

“One in every five hundred citizens is mugged. I was the unlucky one. I would’ve rather died than let that asswad take my first paycheck.”

“Darius,” Garen said, trembling from the horrible scenarios that kept flying through his mind. “Did you kill him?”

“No. I took his knife, gave him a scar to match mine, and told him to fuck off.”

He sighed in relief, even though the question had been ridiculous to start with. Darius didn’t strike him as a murderer, even in the context of self-defense. He was a kind person who had been shoved into a horrible life, an ordinary student with a reputation built entirely on misunderstandings-

“Shit,” Darius said, stopping in his tracks. He simultaneously let go of Garen’s hand, threw it aside as though it were something to be ashamed of.

Up ahead, a group of people donning all-black clothes and bandanas on their faces were graffitiing the front of a tall white building. It was a _huge_ building, with decorative archways and steps in the front - and the sign in front of the steps read ‘Noxon City Hall’.

When the bandits noticed them standing there, one of them nodded his head in greeting.

“Stay here,” Darius muttered, his voice harsh again, as though Garen were a stranger, and then he walked up the steps and spoke with the one who had greeted him.

He was skinny, and much shorter than Darius, though their posture was that of equals. His head was bald between three distinct cornrows which tied together at the back. His right arm rested on a permanent crutch.

That was Jericho Swain.

The others had spray-painted a message onto the front wall of City Hall.

_WE CANNOT BE STOPPED_

_WE WILL WRITE THE FUTURE_

Between the two statements was a large red ‘A’ encased in a circle.

Anarchy.

They were part of a criminal anarchist group. Darius was part of a criminal anarchist group.

He saw a police car round the corner on the far end of the street, and when the siren started they all started running; Darius was down the steps and pulling his arm, screaming, “What the fuck are you doing?! Run _now,_ before they get your description!”

He didn’t want to run. He had always been taught to respect the law, that it upheld peace, that it was absolute and there was no reason to break it. He wanted to stay there and report everything he had seen. Let Darius run. Garen was no criminal.

Then the first band of light rose above the skyline, the first shade of gray that was just a bit brighter than all the others, the brazen hint of difference foreshadowing the sun.

And he saw the apocalypse on the horizon. And he ran.

They ran until they were out of breath, surpassing the others and then leading them, weaving through side streets and changing direction every time they heard the sirens approach again. Then they were all resting against the side of a building and it was silent save for their panting.

Now that they were close together, Garen could recognize some of the others as well. The bartender that Darius had been speaking with at Jayce’s party. Emilia LeBlanc, who had performed a shockingly impressive magic trick at the school-wide talent show. Katarina, and her sister, Cassie. Kat was glaring between him and Darius as though she had just been stabbed.

Darius grabbed his arm again, harshly, and they departed from the group without a farewell. After they had turned the second corner, Garen yanked himself away, wincing from the shockwave that passed through to his broken arm, and shouted, “So _that’s_ the meaning of the break-in at your place?! That’s the cause that you got arrested for, and beaten for?! Anarchy?”

“You have a fucking problem with it?” Darius answered, his eyes narrowing.

“You’re a criminal! And you _want_ to be one; you want to live in a world of chaos-”

“Anarchy is not chaos.”

“Oh, right. Living with no rules is not chaos. Living with no authority will not result in chaos.”

“Anarchy is freedom. A world where we don’t _need_ authority, because everyone looks out for those who deserve it of their own accord. Unlike this trash government that claims equality and only helps those who can pay them for it.”

Garen actually stopped to consider it, but he couldn’t cogitate effectively with anger overriding every rational thought with worst-possible scenarios and the accompanying expletives. His fist curled in at his side. He couldn’t fathom how Darius could be so stupid.

“If you have nothing left to say, then get the fuck out of my life. You’ve made your position towards me clear,” Darius snarled, turning to walk. His final statement was barely audible. “It’s exactly what I expected.”

It occurred to Garen that Darius must have expected rejection, and that was why he had insisted on keeping the nature of his involvement hidden even when the evidence was there for everyone to see. He had planned on letting this die _before_ Garen hated him, so that at least he might remember it with fondness.

He was wrong.

“Darius,” Garen said, following him.

“Fuck off.”

He wasn’t sure what to say. He was too angry to open his mouth with saying something stupid. So they walked through the city in silence, one after another, minds filled with misunderstandings and frustrations that refused to disappear.

After awhile, they reached the parking structure, and Darius started the truck without unlocking the passenger door.

“Darius!”

The truck backed out with an angry whirr, nearly hitting him in the process. He didn’t think. He sprinted to it, grabbed the side wall, and flung himself up and over into the bed of the truck. When it skidded to a stop, his back and head collided with the wall. It hurt so that he didn’t have the chance to be shocked that he had made it; he had never tried to jump into a moving truck before, even with both arms available for use.

The driver door seemed to fling itself open, and Darius was there at the side of the truck bed, grabbing his collar and pulling upward as though he were going to throw Garen out onto the ground.

“Nothing’s changed!” Garen shouted, blinking the black spots out of his eyes, and that was when Darius stopped, with Garen gripping his forearm in an attempt to regain some sort of balance as he knelt there in the bed of the truck.

“Nothing’s changed about the way I feel,” he continued breathlessly, meeting Darius’s eyes, and they were filled with malice. “I don’t agree with what you believe in… but I love you.”

There was a moment of stark stillness, and silence save for the rapid beating of Garen’s heart. He felt like he could run a marathon even with his head swimming the way it was.

“Don’t make me leave. I want you next to me, anarchist or not. I don’t know what it is; I don’t understand it either. I just know I love you.”

He remembered the night at the bar, and Darius’s reaction when he had said it indirectly. Perhaps he had believed it back then too, and he just hadn’t known it. Perhaps there had never been a specific moment when care became love, just an increasing awareness of something that had been there all along, inevitably.

He expected a hot clip to the face, a turning of gravity and a concrete ground. He closed his eyes. He was prepared for it, even, and he accepted it. He wasn’t sorry for telling the truth.

He felt himself being pulled forward, and then he felt Darius’s lips on his. He felt himself sinking with only his hold on this person to keep him afloat - this person who made him feel every emotion he had ever felt except ten times magnified, who continuously dismantled the world as he knew it, and frustrated him at every turn only to make up for it all in a single touch, or a single gaze, or a single kiss. He was more alive now than he had ever been in twenty years of living.

They parted, and Darius stared at him with an expression almost suspicious, as though he were gauging whether Garen had been telling the truth, and still wasn’t convinced.

“Get in the car,” he said, letting go of Garen’s collar.

Garen winced as he jumped back over the side, his vision a flurry of black once again, and white noise in his ears. He stumbled into the passenger seat and let himself fall downwards, his head resting beside the steering wheel, on Darius’s thigh. “Could I?” he asked. “I think you gave me a concussion.”

There was no answer, but Darius didn’t protest. As they drove out of the parking structure, the interior of the truck went dark, and Garen watched the shadows made by the streetlights pass over Darius’s face. He was still unreadable, but Garen was getting better at translating. At least, he liked to think so.

* * *

The sun was rising when he woke up. The car was still. Darius had his eyes closed and his head resting against the window. He stirred when Garen sat up.

“Could I stay?” Garen asked tiredly, because he couldn’t spend another moment wondering; he couldn’t step into that apartment again not knowing if he would be unwelcome there the next time.

Darius got out of the car and walked to the front door, rubbing his eyes as he sorted through the keys. For a moment after unlocking it, it looked as though he were going to walk through without looking back, and close the door, and that would be it. That would be his answer.

But the door stayed open, even as Darius walked through, weaving like a zombie. He wasn’t being impudent; he was tired.

Garen got out of the car, but paused for a moment before following him. The sky was a gold-lined blue. The apocalypse had been averted.

He had thought it was impossible.

Inside, Darius had collapsed on the bed without even pulling the covers on. He had driven forty minutes each way in the ungodly hours of the morning, with a police chase in-between. Garen took off his pants and curled up next to him, wrapping the blankets around them and hugging himself close.

The thousand-dollar queen-sized bed at home was nothing compared to this. The cold silk sheets were far less than comfortable.

He didn’t want to fall asleep anywhere else again.

 _This_ was home.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'M SORRY FOR THE LONG WAITS
> 
> I'M SO FRUSTRATED WITH THIS STORY RIGHT NOW
> 
> And also finals. ; _ ;
> 
> I love you all, readers. <3

The ‘anarchist attack’ on Noxon City Hall was one of the top stories on the news the following morning, but it was being used to insult the criminals behind it in every way possible, to make them sound like psychopathic, uneducated brutes who wanted nothing less than the downfall of all forms of safety and order in the entire world.

It was to be expected. If the government wasn’t able to cover up the existence of a threat like that before it got out to the public, then they would do everything possible to make it a threat that the public would oppose rather than support. They used the media, which had an incredible talent for bending the truth.

The truth was that the supposedly barbaric criminals behind the message on City Hall were just a team of brave teenagers with an unorthodox belief. They weren’t dangerous, and as far as Garen knew, they were out to make the world a better place rather than a worse one, even if their methods for doing so were considered questionable to most.

Garen was just trying to fathom how a criminal anarchist group could happen to have a base in his university, and how so many people he knew could happen to be a part of it without betraying their private allegiances or activities to the general public.

For example, Katarina. How the hell had he managed to fuck her for an entire quarter without gaining even an inkling of an idea of her having beliefs that differed from the typical nationalism, let alone being involved in a campaign related to it? Was he truly that naive, or had she simply evaded detection extremely well? Where were _her_ bruises and handcuff welts?

His phone, which he had been reading the new articles off of, was snatched unexpectedly from his hand. Darius glanced at the contents of the screen for a second or so before tossing it on the bed behind him, where Garen couldn’t reach it. “How long have you been awake?”

“Twenty minutes or so,” Garen answered.

“And you spent that reading stories fabricated by news corporations to make the most money possible?”

“They’re telling it as they see it - as a threat to the safety of the community.”

“Have you forgotten that I’ve already been arrested? They know who’s behind it. A gang of college students who aren’t a threat to anybody by themselves. They tell the story that whoever paid them off the most wants them to tell. In this case, the government, because the government knows we can start a revolution.”

Garen had never thought about it that way before, but he didn’t buy it, either. “How could you possibly start a revolution?”

“There are more unhappy people than you think, Garen. And they’re unhappy for a reason.”

The general assumption had always been that people became unhappy when they made themselves unhappy. They broke the standards that were there for a reason and wondered why they found others punishing them for it, looking upon them with scorn.

Darius had been the first exception. He hadn’t deserved to be left on the doorstep of an orphanage at four years old. Parents had a responsibility to teach their children what’s right, and Darius had never been taught; he was exempt from derision because of that, at least until the point where he threatened someone else’s liberties unprovoked.

Garen didn’t advance his train of thought anywhere past that point. He sighed, and said, “You know you’re talking about something very serious, right?”

“What do you think I am, a child?”

There was resolution in his eyes, fierce as though a revolution had already started, and sending the accusation that he didn’t know what he was talking about right back around.

Garen felt the overwhelming urge to kiss him.

Darius beat him to it, moving closer so that his chest pressed against Garen’s shoulder, and his hand reached barely underneath Garen’s shirt. There it was again, the addiction, the sparks traced by a single finger that sent his entire body into tumult. And why? Just because of that deadly look in his eyes, that stubborn will that challenged him like no one ever had before.

The time they spent parted to take a breath, Garen filled with a murmur: “I love you.”

“You should stop saying that,” Darius answered, scooting lower to plant a warning kiss on Garen’s neck, pinching the skin between his teeth.

“Why should I stop? I mean it.”

“One day you’re going to expect me to say it back.”

He might have asked what the problem was with saying it back, but the way that Darius’s teeth and tongue were grazing his skin was making his thoughts incomprehensible, and his voice, as always, exceptionally difficult to control. “It… It doesn’t matter.”

Darius was pulling his shirt up, letting his hands roam across Garen’s back and chest. “You’re shivering.”

“You’re making me,” Garen said, thinking that maybe this was his goal, to make Garen forget about the implication that Darius might not love him, or, for whatever reason, was unwilling to express it. “Is Draven here?”

“I don’t hear singing in the kitchen, so no.”

He pulled Garen’s clothing off piece by piece, careful around the cast, not bothering to deal with his own. Then he moved slowly downward, positioning himself on top, leaving marks and eliciting needy groans all along the way. He brushed torturously close to Garen’s cock but moved still downward, leaving marks along his thigh, which he pushed upward to give himself access, and then pressing his tongue against Garen’s entrance. He kept teasing for a long while, delving in and out, tickling the skin with the tip of his tongue, before Garen finally said, _“Please,”_ in a tone that couldn’t be ignored, and he sat up and undid his jeans.

“Has anyone ever told you how loud you are?” he remarked, and as he pulled his shirt off he felt a hand at the base of his cock and Garen’s lips around him.

He was an amateur, and his teeth kept chafing, but even so his mouth was hot and needy and _shit,_ Darius hadn’t expected that, he grabbed a tuftful of hair and watched until it became too much and he pulled Garen off of him.

“Yes,” Garen answered, “they have,” looking up at him with lust entirely unabated by the way that he was being manhandled, the rough grip on his hair and the nails digging into his shoulder. He didn’t mention the fact that he was much louder as a bottom, since it felt so damn good.

“Next time, watch your teeth,” Darius said, pushing Garen onto his back. “Have you been tested?”

“STDs? Yeah, I’m clean.”

“Let me feel you.”

They had been moving so fast up until this point, where Darius lingered over him on hands and knees and asked him with sincerity, and Garen understood without asking that Darius wouldn’t do this if he was putting Garen at risk. He was clean and he wanted to feel as good as Garen did, without the rubber in the way.

Garen pulled the lube from the bedside drawer and offered it to him. “What are you waiting for?”

He coated himself, pinned Garen’s available hand to the sheets above his head, and thrust inside. Garen’s body shook with every thrust, assaulted with pleasure and a faint twinge of strain which grew less and less significant. He could see the spasms that fluttered across Darius’s face, hear the pleasured groans which periodically escaped him, revealing the primal parts of him which were kept so well-hidden most of the time.

With his free hand he began to stroke Garen’s cock in time, the groans disappearing all at once in place of a hot sensation that filled Garen’s rear; coupled with everything else it had him over the edge in seconds, moaning and gripping the sheets for dear life.

They were on their sides, pressed chest-to-chest and lip-locked, the hot fluid making a trail down Garen’s thigh. It’s hard to catch your breath this way - not that they cared.

“I need to ask you something,” Garen muttered against his lips, blue eyes half-open and glistening in that honest way Darius secretly admired. “Do you know that you’re the only one?”

“I had a hunch.”

“I want to keep it that way, and… I want you to know I can’t stand the thought of someone else being in my place right now. I’d want to murder them.”

Darius closed his eyes as though to shut out the conversation, but the strange part was that he still moved closer as he did so, tucking his face into Garen’s neck. “And here you reprimand _me_ for criminal activity.”

“Darius,” he said. There was a long pause.

“I’d be a shitty boyfriend.”

“Nothing needs to change except the knowledge that no one else can have you.”

It wasn’t completely true. All the worst-case scenarios were lingering in Garen’s mind, the future beatings, the phone calls from jail. They had a lot more than this to talk about.

“I haven’t seen anyone else since the week before I gave you a blowjob.”

“You’ll keep it that way?”

Darius sighed, “Sure.”

“I’m not forcing you?”

“No. You’re… different.”

He might have said more if he had any idea which words to use, which expression and tone of voice to convey the right meaning. He had been hiding himself for so long that he couldn’t remember the right conventions, let alone carry them out without fumbling into a cataclysm of terror and discomfort.

Garen kissed his forehead and rested his cheek against it in just the way that was comfortable. “Thank you.”

“Do you want breakfast? Draven most likely made something before he left.”

The sunlight through the window was much milder than usual, indicating that it was far past morning already. It seemed that all the day’s activities had been inadvertently cancelled (not that Garen could write notes in class anyhow).

“That would be great.”

* * *

The dripping red letters were almost fully painted over by the time Garen gathered the courage to ask. It wasn’t so much the asking itself that bothered him, but the possible outcome of Darius hating him for it. It wouldn’t have mattered if it was anyone else.

“Do you really have no idea who’s behind this?”

To his utter surprise, Darius didn’t react, at least not outwardly. Without looking away from the section of wall that he was painting, he said, “There’s a group of radicals who aren’t satisfied with the punishments that are assigned to us. They’d much rather see us dead, along with anyone else who rebels against the state. It was probably them.”

And by ‘probably’, he meant ‘definitely’.

It was hard to choose what to say when Garen had such a vast multitude of questions in stock, any of which had the potential to rub the wrong way. So they were some manner of a couple now. Couples shared more than usual, but they still fought, and this relationship was hanging on a very thin string.

“Would they actually kill you?”

“Not likely. They don’t actually like to break the law, but sometimes they have to to get their point across.”

Garen noted that he had answered ‘not likely’ rather than ‘no’, and this bothered him immensely.

“Would you mind if I asked you to explain what happened last night?”

“I didn’t know they would be there. Most of the campaigning takes place in Noxon because that’s where it will be seen. We ran into them by chance.”

“So you’re not involved in _all_ of their activities?”

“What’s with all the fucking questions?”

“Sorry,” Garen muttered, casting a wary glance over to him. “I’m just worried.”

“Well, don’t be. I can take care of myself.”

They finished the rest of the job in silence, Garen thinking to himself that he _didn’t_ trust Darius to take care of himself - not with the spiteful and reckless attitude he seemed to base his decisions on. He could easily find an excuse to sacrifice his own life, and even more easily sacrifice the prosperity of his future. There were so many ways that a campaign like this one could go wrong, especially considering there was a rival faction out there with murderous intent.

“Looks good?” Garen asked, setting his brush down in the tray. Darius stepped back to get a full view of the wall.

That was when a familiar voice came through the broken window, and Garen hardly had time to react before the door began to open. “Darius! I’m coming in.”

Her attitude was acutely different from how it had been coming to Garen’s place; back then she had been gentle and seductive, polite, yet mysterious. Here, she was brazen, and when she walked in and met his eyes there was none of the old affection. Only ferocity.

She turned to Darius.

“Jericho’s calling a meeting. To talk about last night… and to talk about _him,_ ” she said, gesturing at Garen with a tilt of her head. “So you’re required to come.”

“Now?”

“Now.”

“Fine, let’s go.”

They started towards the door without any further form of acknowledgement that Garen was even _there,_ so he decided to follow them.

“Mm, he’s not allowed to come,” Katarina remarked outside the door.

“Why the hell not? Didn’t your mother teach you it’s rude to talk about people behind their backs?” Darius retorted, his mocking tone imparting that he didn’t so much believe it as consider it a convenient comeback.

“Outsiders aren’t allowed at meetings regardless of how many times they’ve ridden your dick, Darius.”

“You act like you haven’t ridden his dick just as many times.”

“So what? I never invited him to a private meeting.”

“I didn’t invite anyone. He has the right to walk wherever the fuck he wants.”

“Then he’ll sit outside.”

“Whatever.”

Several times, Garen had opened his mouth only to be rendered speechless before he could interrupt. The two people walking in front of him were two entirely different people from the ones he had known, at least with regards to their attitudes towards him and their careless demeanor. It was just like the previous night, when Darius had spotted the group and immediately treated him like a stranger. He hated it, and he most certainly would have complained if his face wasn’t so red as to deter him from drawing any further attention to himself.

He followed them to the far side of campus into a building that he hadn’t even seen before, which he guessed from the relative lack of passerby was mainly used by graduate students; all of the undergraduate classrooms were easily accessible from the main road that looped around the campus.

There was a small hallway past the lobby, and a bench beside a set of double doors labeled ‘Conference Room’. That was where they stopped.

“It’ll be half an hour or so. Leave if you want to,” Darius said, hardly glancing at him.

“Have fun staring at the wall,” Katarina said, following Darius into the conference room.

“Thanks,” Garen sighed.

As the door closed, he sat down on the bench and wondered why, exactly, he had bothered coming here. Probably because he knew that they were talking about him - unless that had been a joke to spite him - and he wanted to be there even if he couldn’t hear it.

It turned out to be a bad idea, considering the amount of time he had to think about everything that could go wrong if his knowledge as an outsider was actually considered a problem to them. He wanted to trust Darius, but he couldn’t because he had no way of knowing how Darius’s loyalties were distributed, how much higher or lower than the anarchist campaign he placed Garen on his scale of importance.

It was disheartening on all fronts. The longer he sat there the more he wanted to up and go home.

But the doors opened at the same moment that he started leaning onto his feet, so he sat back and tried to look like he didn’t feel so suffocated. The anarchists filed out, chattering amongst themselves like any ordinary group of students that had just gotten out of a class or club meeting, except that in general they dressed darker than the norm. A plentiful majority of them took a long glance at him as they walked past; there were too many eyes to choose from, so he placed his hands in his lap and stared at those instead. Clearly, they knew who he was, which confirmed his worst suspicions that Katarina _hadn’t_ just been mocking him earlier.

One of the anarchists sat down next to him. If Garen remembered correctly, it was the bartender from Jayce’s party. At first, he didn’t say anything; he just sat there with his arms crossed until everyone else had filed out of the building, except Darius, who still hadn’t emerged from the conference room.

When he spoke, he didn’t bother turning his head or uncrossing his arms. His voice was serious, but not threatening.

"I think you've realized by now that we're not a regular club. The general population wouldn't understand why we do what we do, and that's why they aren't supposed to know anything about us except maybe that we exist. People like you are a problem. Darius stayed behind to discuss that problem."

"Why are you telling me this?'

"Because I have one thing to say to you. I don’t care what happens in there. They might decide to cut you off, or they might decide not to do anything. It doesn’t matter. If you love him, make sure he knows it. And don't ever let him forget."

He stood up, leaving Garen tense and confounded, and entirely unsatisfied with such a brief and unexplained demonstration of concern.

"Who are you?" Garen asked.

"I've known Darius since we were kids."

“Were you also… er…“

“We lived at the same orphanage, but I was adopted,” he said, his tone blank. “I’ve never met a more cynical person. I don’t blame him, to be honest. But the fact that he chose you - I hope you realize how significant that is.”

He made it sound like Darius had never stuck with one person for more than a night. The possibility of that being true was humbling, and strangely… painful.

“He knows that I love him.”

“Just because you’ve told him doesn’t mean that he _knows,_ ” he said, and then he was off.

As he was exiting the building, the door to the conference room opened and Darius emerged. He was solemn. The words fell from his lips like rocks to pavement.

“Forget what I said this morning. This ends now.”

There was no question as to what ‘this’ was referring to. There was no hesitation in his voice, not a crack in his expression. He stood there in the half-open doorway and looked at Garen the way he might have a year ago, when they hated each other.

Garen tried to remember what the other guy had told him just minutes ago, but the words were slipping away faster than he could hang on to them. Maybe it would have been possible if Darius wasn’t looking at him quite like _that._

“Why…?”

“Isn’t it obvious? We’re incompatible.”

“Do you really believe that, or did you just come up with an excuse to get rid of me because someone told you to?”

“Do you really believe that we’re _not_ incompatible, or are you just arguing for something that will never work in the end, no matter how stupidly optimistic you are?”

“You’re wrong,” Garen uttered, suddenly feeling short of breath.

“Wrong or not. I’m not sticking around to find out.”

His thoughts were livid, and spiraling further out of control with every second of reality that hit him. This wasn’t right. It wasn’t even their choice, now; this outcome was being decided by someone else, and Darius wasn’t fighting back, he didn’t care, he had no sympathy for the sensation of being ripped apart at the seams.

“Let me speak to him,” Garen said, standing up to grip the edge of the door, but Darius shoved him away.

“This is my decision. I thought that you of all people would be able to respect that.”

This was the breaking point, the place where the final barricade between fiction and reality collapsed under the pressure, and Garen felt himself being crushed underneath. He might have said, ‘You’re right’ if he could will his lungs to expand, because in the end this was Darius’s decision - it was his decision to weigh another person’s influence as greater than his own desire to keep trying, to love, to decide that Garen was worth it.

He opened his mouth, but nothing came. He couldn’t ask for one more night, not this time, because he knew already that Darius would reject it. They had already had their final night. He had seen the blue sky in the morning and judged too soon.

“Please… could we talk about this?”

“The decision is final. There’s nothing to talk about.”

He stepped forward, hesitated, and took one last kiss. Darius didn’t move. He hadn’t moved since he’d stood in that doorway, donning the same expression he used against everyone else, his eyes cold and empty.

“I love you,” Garen uttered, finally remembering. “And that will never change, no matter what you say to me. No matter how far you push me away. You should know that I love you.”

There was no response, at least not visibly, and no point in staying, since the man standing there was not the one that he needed to cherish in memory. He wasn’t a person at all; he was a shell that had been created to protect the person underneath. The angry, broken, selfless, and wonderful person that Garen had fallen in love with. And there was still so much more to him that Garen hadn’t even seen yet.

He turned and started toward the exit of the building. When he looked back, the door to the conference room had closed. He wondered what Darius was feeling as he stood in there and talked about what had just been done.

He wondered if Darius had ever loved him at all.


	9. Chapter 9

“The light is gone from your eyes, you know,” Lux said, running her lithe fingers through his hair. He lay with his head on her lap on her living room couch, talking for the past half an hour. This was what she always did when he was feeling sad, stressed, or otherwise debilitated. It was comforting beyond belief. It reminded him of how grateful he was to have a sister he got along with.

“We should go on a trip,” she suggested. “Entrust healing and relaxation to Mother Nature for a weekend. I’ve been wanting to take one for awhile.”

“You sound like Zyra.”

“Hey, it’s scientifically proven to be beneficial. Right, Janna?”

“Right,” Lux’s roommate chimed in from the kitchen, where the scent of fresh sugar cookies was wafting forth. “Fresh air and vitamin D is my prescription for any illness, mental or physical.”

“I’m not ill,” Garen complained.

“Oh, hush. Heartsickness counts,” Lux responded, tapping his head to let her stand up and join Janna in the kitchen. “How about next weekend? I’ve been wanting to go to some kind of resort.”

He heard the oven open, and metal scrape against the wire rack. A month ago he wouldn’t have noticed how much privilege it took to mention a resort as a casual destination. Now the idea felt garish.

“Garen?”

“Er… I suppose we could go see the snow in the mountains. If we have to.”

“It will be cold up there.”

“Would you rather visit the beach during winter?”

“I would!” Janna cut in. “There are beaches that are warm right now. Snow is pretty, but it won’t do you any good.”

“You know, maybe the mountains aren’t such a good idea,” Lux added after a second thought, hushing her voice. “There’s that song, ‘Baby, It’s Cold’… I don’t think snow would be the best reminder.”

It had been a week and a half since he’d spoken to Darius, which wasn’t all that long, in the scheme of things, but neither had been their relationship. He hadn’t told Lux until a few days ago, though Jarvan had known since the day after, just by his change in attitude.

The first time they’d taken a break from each other, it had been a childish sort of conflict. This was different. This was love that had been found and lost.

Garen had been avoiding every class with Darius in it, so there were no opportunities for them to look at each other and question what had been done. It wasn’t that he couldn’t function this way; he could. He could live his life normally, hang out with friends, go to parties, pretend to learn something in the classes that he did still attend. But the world itself had irrevocably changed. He was still getting used to the feeling of there being something missing, and of having this newfound knowledge of the world - or lack thereof.

Somehow he knew that there was no going back. He could never return to the utopian world he had grown up in, because that world had never existed in the first place. It was an intricate sham that people like Lux and Janna were still living by, and it wasn’t his job to tear away their rose-colored glasses. Often, he wished he could put his back on.

There was a knock on the door that Lux went to answer. He heard the word ‘Officer’ and raised his head to see a cop in full uniform, clipboard in hand. He was asking if everyone was home, if they had seen or heard anything unusual recently. Something about a nearby shooting.

Garen lurched to his feet and went to the door. “What’s going on?”

“Just checking the neighborhood to make sure everyone’s alright. Someone reported hearing a gunshot about an hour ago, and we found some blood on the asphalt but no bodies. If you know anything, it could help us get this wrapped up as soon as possible.”

“Where did you find the blood?”

“In the alley just behind this community. I don’t mean to alarm anyone; it wasn’t a lot of blood, so if anyone got shot they must’ve just gotten scraped.”

“Could you show me?”

“I’m afraid it’s all taped up. I’m just here to collect information.”

Garen moved past him and headed toward the alley behind the community, waving at Lux as he went. “I’ll be right back.”

The officer was muttering something at him, but he had already jogged out of earshot, relishing the ability to use both of his arms. Three to ten weeks, the doctor had said, but all the fractures had fully healed in no more than two weeks and two days. Garen’s broken bones had always healed faster than expected in the past, as well.

There was more blood than the officer had let on. Maybe not enough to kill someone, because that would have left a trail, but enough to indicate something more than a scrape.

Other than the dark splotch on the asphalt, however, there wasn’t much to look at. Just a bunch of police officers standing around inside the tape, one of them walking over to him, most likely to tell him to leave.

“What happened here?” he asked, before the officer could say anything.

“Gang violence, most likely. Nothing to worry about. You should head home.”

“Have you found anything?”

“Well, there’s not much to find. We’re just cleaning up the blood, then we’ll be out of your neighborhood.”

“What about whoever got hurt?”

“If they were hurt badly enough, they would come to the hospital.”

“What if they’re unable to?”

“Then there’s nothing we can do for ‘em. Someone who’s on the run is more likely someone we need to be arresting,” the officer explained, checking his watch. “We’re not here to answer questions, son; we’re here to do our jobs, and you need to stay out of the way until we’re finished. Head on home.”

Garen was dumbfounded. The officer might as well have told him that whoever was involved didn’t deserve to be saved, since it was just ‘gang violence, most likely’. The message was subtle - so subtle he wouldn’t have noticed it before - but it was there. Or maybe he would have noticed, but he wouldn’t have cared because he had never personally known anyone involved in gang violence, so he hadn’t considered them people in the same way that he considered everyone else.

“Thank you officer,” Garen said, insincerely. The officer nodded at him as he went.

When he walked back into the apartment, he grabbed his jacket and turned back toward the door. “I have to go.”

“What happened? Is someone you know involved?”

“I don’t think so, but I have to check.”

“Is it Darius?”

He might have denied it if there was any point, but Lux already saw the answer in his eyes. She walked over to him, gave him a hug, and then placed her hands on his shoulders and said, “I trust your judgment, Garen. If you say he’s a good guy, then I won’t argue with you about that. But love can cloud our reasoning. Don’t let him stomp all over you and just walk away, okay?”

“You think I wouldn’t speak my mind in a situation like that?”

“I know you would,” she smiled. “Just making sure.”

“Hey!” Janna called out from behind the counter, holding out a little plastic bag. “Don’t forget your cookies.”

Garen thanked them and left. The cookies had little blue snowflakes on them. It never snowed here, which he was glad for, but Noxon would occasionally get an inch or two during the coldest part of winter - which was now.

He thought of the bundle of blankets on the bench in the park, and suddenly he didn’t feel so cold anymore.

* * *

Outside Darius’s place, Garen started sweating like it was summer. He paced back and forth in front of his car four times and unlocked it twice before he finally convinced himself that he had left Lux’s place in such a hurry just for this, and yes, he was going to do it. He was going to find out if Darius was okay, and then he was going to leave. And that would be that.

The broken window beside the door had been replaced by now, so he couldn’t hear anything from inside, but the lights were on and somehow that alarmed him far more than it reassured him.

He knocked. He waited. He rubbed his hands together only to find out that they were already clammy, so he had no actual reason to try to warm his hands. When the door opened he became painfully aware of his own heartbeat.

“Oh, thank goodness,” he said, placing a hand over said heartbeat as though doing so would make it less audible. “I’m sorry for coming, I just… There was a gunshot reported nearby, and I just had to make sure.”

“It was Cass that got shot, not me. In the leg. Her mother’s a doctor, so she’s being taken care of at home.”

“What happened?”

“The nationalists decided to pick a fight, and one of them brought a gun.”

Garen opened his mouth to complain, but stopped when he realized that they were speaking to each other normally, that Darius wasn’t looking at him with hate, that they might as well have been chatting here on the doorstep as lovers still, and it hurt, and he needed to leave before it got worse.

He took a step back. “Well, I’m glad you’re alright.”

“Where are you going?”

“I’m sorry for bothering you.”

“Come inside, Garen.”

“What?”

Darius sighed, took his arm, and pulled him inside. He felt his stomach turn, and as he was being led to sit against the back of the sofa he said, “Listen, I didn’t mean anything by visiting you, I was just worried, I-”

The space between them became negligible all at once. Darius’s hands were on the couch on either side of him, one of them touching his wrist. He was leaning into Garen’s neck. His lips were brushing his cheek, soft and steady, and then they were kissing, and there was a hand on his waist, and his chest was so tight he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t think, he couldn’t-

He snapped his head away and heard himself breathing much harder than he should have been. He felt dizzy. “What… are you doing?”

“Kissing you.”

“You told me this was over.”

“I said what I needed to say to get Jericho off my ass about it.”

“Are you telling me… that you didn’t mean it?”

“Not exactly, no.”

Garen grimaced. He raised his left fist and threw it forward, the force carrying him to his feet and sending Darius stumbling backwards into one of the dining chairs. When he touched his hand to his cheek, it came away with blood. He didn’t try to retaliate.

“Do you have any idea what it feels like?!” he began, exasperated, and it wasn’t often that he lost his temper. “To be abandoned for the sake of a shitty cause that’s more likely to get you killed than to help anyone?! And by the one that you love the most?”

He didn’t move, didn’t even blink. He just sat there with the same unreadable expression that he always had, and took it.

“You can’t treat people that way when they love you. It’s the worst…most _terrible_ feeling.”

“I know,” he said, looking away. “I’m sorry.”

Garen was so surprised that he shut his mouth, or rather, let it hang open while Darius explained himself.

“Nobody warned me that my parents weren’t coming back. I’ve been left without an explanation for sixteen years, yet I still sit around hoping that I’ll get one. I know how it feels.”

“So why… didn’t you _say_ anything?”

“Because I can’t trust you. You told me you love me. So what. My parents said the same thing.” He looked up at Garen with an unusual, feral sort of glint in his eyes. “Then I see you, and I lose control. I pull you in when I shouldn’t, and regret it later. You’re like a fucking disease.”

“How is this going to go, then?” Garen asked. “Are you going to ask me to leave so that the next time you see me, you can kiss me again and say nevermind?”

He looked conflicted, as though his natural impulse when faced with a difficult question were to tell Garen to leave, but he couldn’t now that it had been pointed out. “I don’t know.”

It made him so angry. Undeniably angry, uncontrollably angry. Garen hadn’t ever thrown a punch without thinking about it first, until tonight, and it alarmed him now to wonder if that could be considered abuse. It wasn’t as though Darius hadn’t taken blows a hundred times worse in the ring; still, it was unacceptable.

Because in the end, Garen was relieved more than anything. For the first time in his life there was something he loved that could be taken away from him in an instant, and no amount of money or privilege could bring it back. It was the scariest thing he’d ever experienced, and that was exactly why he needed to appreciate this, with everything he had. He needed to forgive.

He straddled Darius in the chair and hugged himself close - close enough to be sure that Darius could feel his heart pounding, because he could sacrifice that small bit of pride for the sake of showing this man the effect he had.

“If you would just trust me,” he said softly, surprised to feel arms wrap around him. Darius hardly ever returned affections; he distributed them on his own terms. “I could be the happiest man in the world.”

“Yeah, right,” Darius grunted, and when Garen pulled away to look at him there was a fading smile on his lips.

“How can I convince you that it’s true?” Garen asked, thinking that he had asked this once before, and he was just as serious about it now as he had been back then, but this time he wasn’t going to let it go without solving the problem.

Darius pulled him in and kissed him. It wasn’t a proper answer, but it planted a different idea in his mind, reminded him of an image that had been there ever since the conversation in the bar, waiting for an opportunity to present itself. He didn’t think that Darius had a proper answer anyway, other than ‘you can’t’, and that was unacceptable.

“You can do whatever you want with me,” he said, hard from a single kiss and a vivid imagination, and he was sure that Darius felt it along with his heartbeat. “I would trust you with my life.”

“You’re asking for sex?”

“I’m asking you to test me.”

“That’s something you do because you want to, not in order to prove a point.”

“I want you to,” Garen insisted. “I want you to find out for yourself just how much I would entrust to you. I want you to see how you make me feel. You. No one else.”

He watched Garen for several seconds, contemplating. Then his hands fell to his sides and he said, “Get to bed.”

The atmosphere had changed along with his voice, which instilled an inexplicable fear in Garen’s body. His stomach clenched; his muscles seemed to move of their own accord. He got up and walked to the bedroom, hearing Darius follow him. He heard a drawer open and close, and then black satin brushed across his lashes and obscured the world from view.

He felt himself being pushed onto his back, his shirt pulled over his head, his arms secured against the headboard one by one, at the wrists and at the elbows. The nylon rope dug into his skin not quite enough to hurt unless he pulled against it, and it was left looser around his right arm, which ached faintly on the inside and felt tender on the surface, since it had been in the cast.

“Your arm?” Darius asked, slipping a finger between skin and rope to ensure it wouldn’t cut off circulation.

“It’s fine,” Garen answered, flexing it to see.

“Your safe word-”

“I don’t need one.”

“Trinity. Repeat it so you don’t forget.”

Darius was groping him through his jeans, but he pulled his hand away when Garen didn’t answer.

“Repeat it.”

“Trinity.”

“Again.”

“Trinity.”

He moved downward and pressed his mouth against the outside of Garen’s jeans. Garen bucked upward, suddenly understanding in full the implications of being tied down like this, restricted of both movement and vision. He understood how he could be teased, tormented, manipulated. The warmth had disappeared the moment he responded to it. His muscles strained against his bonds.

After a pause that felt much much longer than it was, his jeans and boxers were yanked off of him with no concern for chafing, and he felt another constriction around his thigh, his balls, the base of his cock, his other thigh. The rope pulled his thighs back and pinched him where he was most vulnerable, magnifying the already existent throb and accelerating his heart rate to maximum.

Darius gripped his cock but didn’t stroke it. Garen could feel his breath against his lips. “Too much for you to handle?"

"Not enough,” Garen insisted stubbornly, despite the overwhelming fact that he had never experienced anything even close to this before, and that with anyone but Darius he wouldn’t allow it let alone enjoy it.

Perhaps it wasn’t the pain itself that made it enjoyable so much as the idea of it, the mental image of himself under such obscene circumstances, the absence of foresight which made every second linger and turned every touch into a shock.

There was a finger at his lips, then another. Garen sucked them. They withdrew and penetrated him, scissoring him open with far less regard for his comfort than in previous instances.

"How does this prove anything?" Darius asked while Garen was groaning, establishing a slow rhythm.

"It doesn't,” he managed, steadying his voice as he became accustomed to the movement. “I can't force you to trust me. I can only show you that I trust you. You could kill me right here and now… among countless other excruciations. But you won't. Just as I won't leave you behind, because I know exactly what that feels like, and I would never willfully inflict that kind of pain on you."

“You’re full of shit,” Darius responded, but before Garen could argue with him, the fingers were out and his mouth was occupied instead. “This time, watch your teeth.”

Garen couldn’t help but consider it a small personal victory that, despite Darius having shut him up on purpose, he had trusted Garen enough not to bite his dick off in return. So he sucked it the way he’d read about in those articles the other day and been robbed the chance to practice, with lots of spit and enthusiasm, deep as he could without choking, then pulling back to taste everything, to lick his base and balls with a wet cock against his cheek, his arms aching against their bonds as he leaned ever forward.

In a way, it was frustrating, not having any indication of when Darius would withdraw himself until it happened, and Garen was left lapping at empty air. Perhaps with all the blood in his lower regions there was none left to stimulate his brain, which made it all the more shocking when a lube-slick penis pushed inside of him and his bonds prevented him from even flinching backwards in response.

He was merciless. It felt like he was letting go of everything he had previously been holding back for Garen’s sake. This was pure passion, pure power, pure anger; it was _him_. And it hurt until Garen learned to bear it, to relax himself even against the pounding, by which time his throat was already raw and getting rawer by the second.

But as the pleasure mounted, the rope around his scrotum seemed to grow tighter and tighter, halting him at the cusp of orgasm. Waves of expectant ecstasy coursed through him, all of them unanswered, leaving him trembling with a thick lump in his throat.

“What’s wrong?” Darius uttered, while only their breath and the creak of the bed took the place of Garen’s moans.

He cried out in response to a particularly hard thrust, gritting his teeth. “God, Darius… I can’t- _aaagh._ ”

“Can’t cum?” he finished, but said nothing further. He leaned down closer until their bodies were against each other, still thrusting, sucking hard on the skin of Garen’s neck and leaving ghost kisses in the wake.

Until he was trembling, moaning in his short, throaty way, his body arching as he slowed his thrusts and his warmth filled the inside of Garen’s body.

He wrapped his hand around Garen’s cock, gave it a tentative stroke. “You want to cum?”

“Yes,” Garen breathed desperately.

Another single stroke. Slow… tantalizing. Nothing more.

_“Please.”_

He let go, pulled out, and along with the contact between their skin, seemed to disappear entirely for a moment, until something else pressed at Garen’s entrance, something cold and clearly inanimate, and the further it went the bigger it got. Bigger than Darius. Deeper. Impossibly deep. And since he couldn’t see how big, impossibly large.

“You sound like you like it,” Darius said, pushing it in and out, slowly for now.

Garen didn’t answer, at least not with words.

“Are you going to make me repeat myself?”

“I like it,” he gasped, and he wasn’t lying.

“Enough to fuck yourself with it?”

“Yes.”

He shoved it in deep and left it there, directing his attention to the knots holding back Garen’s arms. He asked, “How have you taken care of yourself for the past week?”

After a apprehensive pause, Garen answered, “I fingered myself.”

Without the ability to visually gauge Darius’s reaction, he expected some sort of punishment, but none came. Perhaps he was smirking, because he had already figured out that without a right hand Garen had been forced to figure out other ways to satisfy his needs. Not that he wouldn’t have tried those ways even with a right hand.

The ropes came loose at his elbows first, one at a time. He felt Darius working at his right wrist, then his left. Both came completely free at the same time, and he lunged forward to wrap his arms around this man, to feel him, to kiss him.

And he did, for a fleeting moment, but then he felt a hand around his throat, pushing him back into the position he had been in before, robbing him again of the free movement of his limbs simply by capturing all of his attention at once. He didn’t dare try to pry the hand away.

“You do exactly what I tell you,” Darius said, exerting just enough pressure with his thumb and index finger to threaten air removal without actually doing it. “Feel what you have inside you.”

Garen did. There was about an inch sticking out, hard body with a soft, rubbery surface, all of it slick to the touch, and bigger than Garen had expected he could - or would - ever handle.

“Fuck yourself with it.”

He started where Darius had left off, slowly at first, but not for long before his desperation took over and he made it pound his insides in such a way that the black obscuring his vision flashed white with pleasure, and he was at the edge of climax again, so close it was torturous.

“Please, Darius… Let me-  _please._ ”

“Do it.”

His right hand moved to his cock, the left taking its place at the base of the toy in his ass, jamming it in all the way to the base and sending him straight over the edge, _finally,_ and it felt so good that nothing existed for a moment except the colors white and black and the sensations that were contorting his body - the fire in his stomach, the object filling his ass, the hand at his throat.

Then reality faded back into existence, and he still couldn’t see but he could _hear_ his own labored breathing, and feel the aches across his body slowly magnify. The hold on his neck slackened into a caress, the blindfold was pulled over his head. He pulled the toy out and pushed it aside. If he hadn’t been so exhausted he would have pulled Darius straight to him; instead, they watched each other until Darius decided to bridge the gap.

Garen tried to remember what it had felt like, kissing him for the first time. Two kids in a cluttered college living room. Lips lined with fire, and a cocksure smile. Things were so much different now.

They weren’t just two kids acting on impulse, kissing strangers that they thought they knew. Lips weren’t made of fire; they were made of flesh, tainted with scars left by fists and foreign mouths. And there was no need to smile because Garen already knew the truth - that Darius wasn’t nearly as sure as he made himself out to be.

He untied the ropes pulling Garen’s thighs back toward the headboard, which left angry red bands in their wake. He freed his intimates, and Garen sighed in relief, running his hands over them as though to ensure everything was still intact. Then they lay beside each other, silent for a time, face-to-face with legs entwined, and the seeming neutrality on Darius’s face made Garen start to think again about all the things that he didn’t know. He had long since gotten used to the pain that came along with it, consciously forgetting, for Darius’s sake, that healthy relationships weren’t supposed to feel that way.

“Have you ever been tied up like that before?” he asked, because Darius must have learned it from _somewhere._

“No.”

“Would you?”

“No.”

“Even if it were me?” In the empty space between question and answer, he considered the fact that he was not asking because he _wanted_ to, namely because he had no idea how to act sexy let alone keep up that act while hurting someone for their own pleasure. “I’m not asking to actually do it, I just… I wonder if you trust me, at all.”

“Why do you consider it such a big deal? There are people who do it with strangers on a regular basis, for fun.”

“But not you,” Garen countered. “And not me. The world isn’t perfect, as much as I would like it to be. It’d be idiocy to place my life in the hands of a stranger for sexual gratification.”

He turned onto his back, closing his eyes and snorting.

“What’s funny?”

“Finally something we agree upon.”

He hadn’t answered the question, and Garen might have pressed him for it if there wasn’t a more important question waiting to be asked - but expecting an answer to this one was like sticking one’s hand into a patch of nettles expecting to pull out a bag of gold. Not quite impossible.

“Do you love me?”

There was no visible reaction, not the slightest indication to point the answer in the direction of yes or no.

Eventually he turned back onto his side and pressed his lips to Garen’s, and looked at him for awhile, the band of green around his pupils seeming to shift like oceans of fog, obscuring whatever went on in the mind beneath.

“Ask me again some other time,” he said, reaching out to pull the switch on the bedside lamp and engulf them in darkness.

“What about me, Darius? What are you giving me as assurance that you won’t just leave when it’s convenient?”

“My word. Keep it safe from Jericho and anyone who might tell him. I don’t want to leave you.”

And that was good enough, just for now. Darius telling him that he didn’t want to leave. It was much more than he was usually willing to express.

“What time is it?” Garen asked, several minutes later.

“Probably around ten.”

“Hm… Then I’ll ask ahead of time.” He found Darius’s hand under the covers, squeezed it, pressed it against his heart. “Be my Valentine?”

“You’re kidding me.”

“I’m not.”

“You actually buy into that crap? It’s a capitalist convention that forces every male in the nation to buy overpriced chocolates or get dumped.”

“I take that as a yes?”

He grunted unhappily, to which Garen kissed his forehead, and said, “It’ll be just like any other day. No chocolates or flowers.”

“Then what’s the point?”

“The point is that you agree to be mine.”

Something about the silence then made Garen’s heart skip a beat. It was already glaringly true that they couldn’t tie this down, not for real; it was a silent undertone of everything they did together. It could be forgotten, but only momentarily, and then the pain and doubt came flooding right back in.

But Darius clarified. “I’ve already agreed to that against my will. Compliments of the shitty flying baby.”

Garen wanted to assume he was lying, just like he had when it was convenient to convince Jericho Swain. He could have easily believed that everything Darius said and did was part of an act he’d been keeping up his entire life, that he had vainly assumed to understand something about this man when in fact he hadn’t even scratched the surface. If he started feeling happy now, he would only be disappointed later.

Yet he couldn’t help but hug himself close, grinning wider than he had all month. He couldn’t help but hope that this was real.

“I love you,” he said, and for once he didn’t mind not hearing it in return, because he felt like he had, just in different words. He felt like he had found the top of the world and wasn’t ever coming down from it.

It wouldn’t be too bad, keeping this secret. Just as long as he could feel this heartbeat beneath his fingertips each night as he fell asleep.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I HAVE NOT ABANDONED THIS STORY I'VE JUST BEEN SO FUCKING BUSY. I LOVE YOU ALL. <3
> 
> (Also, I edited the ending of the previous chapter, so please go back and read that bit first if you haven't already.)

Half the seats in the lecture hall were filled, which was less than expected, but not so much less that the plan couldn’t proceed. As Jericho spoke, Talon glanced out the large square windows lining the top of the hall. It was cloudy outside; a good omen, in his opinion. This place stayed disgustingly sunny no matter the season.

They had chosen a lecture hall instead of a conference room because this meeting was for all general members as well as interested visitors - anarchists from other towns as well as trusted personal friends. It wasn’t a meeting that they had advertised on posters throughout campus, like other clubs did; in fact, the school didn't recognize this group’s existence, because this group had never asked to be recognized. They had to scope out meeting places several weeks in advance to ensure that no one would walk in on them.

Today’s meeting had two purposes: share the ideology, and outline the plan. No one would want to join such a radical movement if they didn’t see its potential to enact an actual change, unless they had already been passionate from the start. If all went well, this operation would change the nation forever.

The audience had started asking questions. A girl in the front wondered why, if the point of anarchy was absolute equality, this group had a leader.

The answer was simple. The point of anarchy, according to this group’s beliefs, was not equality in the way that she thought of it. It was the destruction of inborn privilege, and it was the power of the people to choose directly, rather than sending their opinions through a trail of letters in the hopes that someone, somewhere down the line, might actually read it. All societal conflict was the fault of the state, not the society. If the state did its job, the people would have no reason to cause conflict.

Jericho had a charming way of putting it: “By establishing myself as a leader, I give my followers the right to walk up to me and promptly disembowel me the moment the feel I deserve it, given that they are physically able to do so.”

At the side of the stage, Darius crossed his arms. Anyone who was paying attention would have received the message that being ‘physically able’ meant being able to get through him first, along with the rest of Jericho’s followers. The people could choose directly by fighting, if they felt it was worth it. This was the proper state of nature - the way it was meant to be. In a democratic process, one can never be sure that their vote is actually going through; the system is often skewed.

Of course, not everyone would understand. Those with privilege supported the current government because it provided them with protection. To others, it either failed to be present or had the opposite effect. It was a many-faced demon that needed to be eradicated.

“So there are no laws? Every man for himself, like in the days of the cavemen?”

“We are much more intelligent than cavemen, who acted solely on an instinct for survival. I trust you can be counted as a man who is living rather than surviving, which is the ideal state of a modern citizen. Or can I?”

There were several laughs, though Jericho’s face remained grim and tense as stone. He continued.

“By living, I mean living with thought and will free of all oppressive societal influences, so that one may embrace their inner compassion rather than learning it from a book of laws. A successful anarchist society depends on each of its members living in this ideal state. Those of us who are already there should be intelligent enough to recognize and assist those who are not, rather than judging them superficially. We should ask the man on the street, instead of sneering or tossing coins: Are you happy? We should ask the criminal: Why? We should ask each and every one of our friends and acquaintances: Are you okay? And if we do not ask, which is perfectly acceptable as a decision of free will, we should not be surprised when one of these people does us wrong.”

“So to your original question: No. There are no laws written in ink on a piece of paper. There are things that society looks upon as right and wrong, and is willing to punish accordingly. We do not take our conflicts to a court where the privileged, who know nothing about us, will judge us, and judge us wrongly. We take our conflicts to our allies. When we punish, we seek also to educate. The walls of a jail cell may teach someone what is right and wrong, but not why. How do you expect a thinking man to behave correctly if you chastise him like a dog? He needs mental stimulation.”

The rest of the questions were re-wordings of the previous questions. Jericho was patient. He seeked to educate.

When the hall remained silent, he began to outline the plan. They were going to take over Noxon City Hall. They would form the new society in Noxon first, and spread outward. They had plenty of supporters there who would keep the local citizens in check as they learned and assimilated. The national government would respond eventually, but they couldn’t arrest an entire city.

Jericho had a meeting with the city manager scheduled for March 23rd. He would have the city manager shut down operations by announcing a paid vacation day for all city employees. At the same time, a colleague in a volunteer position at the police station would cut the phone line there. By the time anyone at the station had the chance to notice, all the entrances to City Hall would be barricaded, and the mayor declaring on every television in Noxon the immediate dissolution of all forms of city government.

The only organization in the city with enough organized manpower and weaponry to successfully break into City Hall after that was the police force. Jericho’s colleague at the police station would give a choice to the presiding officers. The first person to open the door would trip an explosion that would surely kill everyone inside, including himself. He was in contact with the only person who could disable the explosive, and only he knew the verbal codes to either disable or promptly set it off. Anyone who wished to live could sit down with him and learn the new ideology. Anyone else would be left inside to die. If anyone failed to cooperate, all of them would die.

The only other potential dangers, besides the national government, were the couple of gun stores in Noxon, which would be taken over and locked down during the occupation.

Jericho didn’t tell them all of this. He told them everything that could be told without endangering the success of the plan. The chances of anyone in attendance working against them were very little, but existent. He could tell them about his meeting with the city manager because anyone who wanted to warn the city manager would never be able to get through all the secretaries leading up to him, who would take the warnings as a joke and an unnecessary worry. He told them that the police force would be taken care of, but not how, because one could much more easily pass a warning through to them and get the volunteer worker fired. He told them that the only thing they needed to worry about if they wanted to support this movement was their attendance. He did not sugarcoat the fact that if they did not succeed, they would be punished by the current government; however, as the leader he would surely take the brunt of the blame.

“I need a count of allegiance,” he concluded. “All those who wish to take part in the occupation, rise.”

Talon rose, along with the rest of the continuing members. Several unfamiliar faces joined them. A fourth of the hall’s occupants remained seated; this was to be expected from the start.

“Those who are sitting may leave,” Jericho said, in a tone that meant they must leave. The rest of this information was for participators only.

The audience thinned until everyone was standing, and he gestured at them to sit. Talon walked to the front of the stage. He hated this part - public speaking was never his strong suit - but he would bear through it for the sake of the cause.

“We’ll meet at my place. 646 Lotus Circle, only house on the block. It’s far out from any neighborhoods, so no one will notice the cars. Bring black clothing and whatever else you’d like. We’ll be camping out inside City Hall for several days at least. Just remember that you run the risk of losing whatever you bring. Once we’re ready, my sisters and I will drive us to Noxon.”

“What about your parents?” someone asked.

“My parents are one of the biggest reasons this organization exists. They’re coming with us.”

“What day will it be, again?”

“Next Monday. March 23rd.”

There wasn’t much left to say about the operation for now, since the details would be explicated day of, once everyone was there and committed. The meeting was dismissed, and several people came up to the front to express concerns to Jericho; this was ironic considering that he was the most _against_ this plan than anyone else. He considered it messy and dangerous, but there was no way to further postpone it. Talon and the others wanted a revolution, and they wanted it now.

Talon approached Darius on the way out, and they walked together.

“What do you think?”

“This is what I’ve been waiting for all along,” he muttered, though any enthusiasm he felt was masked entirely by his gruff demeanor.

Talon felt the same way.

“Movie tonight?” he asked.

“I’ve got a date.”

“I’m glad to hear things worked out.”

“It’s not him,” Darius declared. “It’s a woman.”

“Really? I never thought that-”

They stared at each other long enough for Talon to notice the smirk hinting at his lips and realize he was joking. A rare occurrence only to appear in his best moods. Good.

“Then I’ll see you on the twenty-third."

“Hm.”

They parted ways, and Darius headed home for date night.

* * *

The wine was sweet, and the steak rare. It bled upon cheap plates with pastel patterns of flowers. Between them was draped a lacy white cloth, much too small for the table. Draven hummed “It’s Amore” as he refilled their glasses, one of which had a chip at the top.

Darius snapped at him to shut the fuck up, forgetting all at once, in annoyance, that his brother had both insisted upon and cooked this dinner. It was their one-month anniversary. The most Darius would have done without his help was maybe initiate a hug and immediately regret it for its awkwardness. He would have preferred that events like this altogether didn’t exist.

But the blue eyes across from him were smiling, which seemed to indicate this wasn’t a _completely_ terrible idea after all.

Draven placed the half-empty wine bottle on the table with a force equal in magnitude to his inherent sass, which, needless to say, was far more force than necessary. “I’ll be out of your way, then,” he declared, in his best passive-aggressive _you-hurt-me_ tone of voice.

“Your tip, sir,” Garen interjected, handing him a stack of folded bills that would pay for this whole set-up twice over. He had originally planned something different, but the way Darius had invited him to this would have made it painful to even mention a different possibility.

_“This Friday,” he muttered from his desk, in such a way that indicated the sentence wasn’t finished. But after several seconds he failed to finish it._

_“This Friday?”_

_“It’s…”_

_He waited for a moment to see if Darius would say it out loud before coming to the rescue._

_“It’s-”_

_“One month. Officially,” he finished, apparently too stubborn to let Garen finish his sentence, and that was the only motivation needed. “Which you know has never… happened to me, before.”_

_“What about it?”_

_“I can’t pay for anything special, but we could have dinner,” he said, struggling in such a way that he almost sounded angry. “Here, I mean.”_

_Garen set aside what he was reading to get up and hug him around the shoulders, feeling a scorching heat emanating from Darius’s cheeks. This simple suggestion must have required a massive effort, and in fact, Darius was probably about to shove him off. He wasn’t one for sentimentalism._

_His shoulders tensed, but he didn’t move otherwise._

_“That’d be wonderful.”_

Draven counted the bills and jittered away in glee. His bedroom door closed, and the clink of silverware filled the silence.

This was the hardest part about being in a relationship, Darius thought: caring. Contemplating every silence and every word. Translating the slightest expression. Hesitating, second-guessing, feeling like a complete idiot for, most of the time, no reason at all. He still wondered sometimes if it was all worth it - all this, and the risk that came along with it.

He met Garen’s eyes. They glanced downward at his plate and back up. “Not hungry?”

He realized he had only taken one bite of steak and gone through two glasses of wine already. He came up with an excuse: “It’s dry.”

“Would you like some of mine? I must have gotten the good slice.”

So oblivious. So innocent.

Today’s meeting had him thinking about how far apart on the spectrum of traditional ‘good’ they were.

“Have you ever committed a crime?” he asked.

“Hmm… I think I accidentally stole a cup from a restaurant when I was younger, but that’s it.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s against the law.”

He realized that he should have expected an answer like that. It was the typical answer. After all, what kind of person would think that laws are bad? A criminal?

What kind of person would even ask the question he was about to ask?

“What makes the law so good?”

Garen leaned back in his seat, air passing through his lips to suggest his discomfort. This was the kind of thing that could start a fight, but he did not back down from the question.

“It retains order. Prevents people - most people, anyways - from killing each other over misunderstandings, from stealing things right out of each others’ hands. That kind of thing.”

“You agree with Hobbes, then.”

“What?”

“Thomas Hobbes. You agree that humanity is naturally wicked.”

Garen sighed again, gave himself a moment, let it go and flashed a smile. “All I know is that humanity is naturally unpredictable. For example.”

He stood up and kissed Darius across the table.

“Why should we need laws if-”

He gripped his jaw and full-on frenched him, and was halfway on top of the table by the time they were done.

“I’m trying to have a conversation.”

“The topic isn’t exactly anniversary dinner material.”

“Neither is your tongue, but you don’t seem to mind moving that up the schedule.”

“Guilty as charged,” Garen grinned. “I’m a criminal.”

Darius decided he wasn’t hungry for anything but this stupid idiot, and perhaps another glass of wine. He grabbed the bottle and stood up. “Get your shirt out of the food.”

In active contradiction to the other’s approach, Garen sat back down and picked up his fork. The stupid grin never left his face, which meant he knew exactly what he was doing. “I’m not finished eating.”

But the moment he reached for his food, a leg pushed past and forced him to stare at the front of a pair of worn-down jeans instead, ever so slightly protruding in the center. Darius was sitting against the edge of the table, probably staining his ass with steak juice as he took a swig of wine.

“By all means, finish.”

“This is the kind of meal you eat in privacy,” Garen replied, eyes carefully tracing the outline of the bulge.

“Draven knows better than to come out now.”

“You’re incredible,” he said dubiously. Nevertheless his fingers replaced his eyes.

“ _I’m_ incredible, when you’re about to give head at the dinner table?”

The zipper came loose, the waistband pulled downward. “You’ll pay me back for it.”

His next answer came at a slight delay, preceded by a sharp inhalation. “I don’t recall making any deals.” How had his tongue gotten so _hot_ since a minute ago?

He teeth grazed purposely, and he withdrew. He had dropped his fork and gripped the base tightly, ever so slowly stroking, as his lips teased at the skin just above. Even with his mouth mostly occupied, the stupid grin shone through every now and then, which meant that he knew exactly what he was doing.

“Fine,” Darius growled.

No one could have guessed that he had been doing this for just one month. Holy fuck.

He didn’t stop until Darius told him to, pulling him off by a tuft of golden-bronze hair, and hell, did he look pretty gazing up at him like that, mouth hanging open in exhalations just slightly less than effortless. The truth was that this was an image out of a dream from almost two years ago, when they had first met, and the realization that he _had_ it now was so overwhelming that he almost mouthed ‘I love you’.

But he didn’t, because the fear of losing it was just as overwhelming.

“There’s no way that I’ll keep quiet,” Garen said conscientiously.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“I could if you slowed down.”

The statement didn’t register. He tucked himself in and moved into the bedroom, where he slammed the door, shoved Garen into bed, and kissed him viciously, feeling Garen's hips grind against him in eager response. He tore each item of clothing off like a child tears off wrapping paper, with nails chafing and little regard for the item beneath. Garen was marked, most heavily at the hips and thighs, from behavior like this, and he hadn’t complained about it because he enjoyed it.

But there was a limit to how many scratches you could get before you stopped feeling them, and one day you looked at yourself in the mirror and were surprised by just how many there were.

It wasn’t abuse, but it wasn’t adoration either. It was an implacable impulse for possession, and not one night went by without this impulse having its influence, like a demon coursing through the veins beneath his skin.

“Darius,” he muttered, as a bruise sunk itself into the sensitive nook between neck and shoulder, but it must have sounded like a moan of pleasure because his fingers pushed deeper, and they didn’t slow down. Garen wasn’t surprised if it _did_ sound like that, because the sensations never ended, even when his conscious mind decided that maybe he wanted to tone them down a little bit and enjoy _each other_ instead of each others’ bodies.

He was shoved further up the bed as Darius entered him, his legs folded habitually at Darius’s sides, arms’ reach constrained by the body above him, so he left them resting against the sheets beside his head. It felt good, just as it always had, but something was missing - maybe the fact that Darius didn’t notice when verbal expressions of pleasure turned into a solely physical response.

So he found himself staring at the ceiling waiting for it to end, experiencing it but not _really_ , because out of all the times they’d had sex during the past month they had never made love, not even on their anniversary.

After a minute, Darius pulled out and leaned back on his knees. His hairline was riddled with sweat.

“It’s like you can’t see me,” Garen said.

“What?”

“What does it feel like?”

Darius stared at him with genuine confusion and slight apprehension.

“Does it feel like you’re having sex, or does it feel like you’re having sex with someone you love?”

He didn’t answer, but the softness that had been missing earlier came into his eyes now, and he lay down again where he could bury his face in the crook of Garen’s neck.

“For me it feels like the first.”

He still didn’t answer. He didn’t apologize. He didn’t say ‘I love you’. And Garen was fed up with trying to get him to do so, so he didn’t try.

He was getting another headache - one of a series of headaches he’d been getting periodically since the accident. Lux had told him that it was probably an unforeseen aftereffect of the brain damage, and that he should get it checked out, but he hadn’t gotten around to it yet.

“Let me get an Advil.”

“I’ll get it,” Darius said. He came back with two pills, a glass of water, and a hand towel soaked in cold water for his forehead. Proof that he did care, at least to some degree.

The cause of this somber atmosphere hadn’t been an issue until now because Garen hadn’t made it an issue, but special days inspired higher expectations. They shined a spotlight on all the shortcomings which were previously accepted out of habit. In reminding you that you were in a relationship, they reminded you of _why_ you were in one as well.

Garen knew his reason. He still hadn’t heard Darius give him his.

* * *

He didn’t visit the doctor until a week later, after finals were over and the pain of his headaches had reached an all-time high. The office was quaint, but the afternoon light glaring through the window was making him dizzy. Lux, beside him, gripped her purse for dear life. She had spent the last twenty minutes lecturing him for waiting so long to come here, and finally lapsed into silence.

The doctor came back with the results of the MRI scan in his hands. He was a tall, lanky man with a ovular glasses and a thin layer of blonde hair. He looked grave, and somehow, faintly surprised.

He sat down and laid the images out on his desk, facing them.

“You see this white section lining the skull? It’s a buildup of blood. If a similar buildup of blood were to happen somewhere else on the body - like a bruise on your leg - blood would swell at the surface of the skin but gradually dissipate through the muscles. The skull, however, is an enclosed space, so there’s nowhere for the blood to go, and right now its pressing down on your brain, causing the symptoms you’ve described. We’re dealing with a chronic subdural hematoma. It’s possible that this was an undetected effect of your head trauma during the accident, but not likely, since the buildup of blood was so slow. Hematomas caused by trauma are typically fast buildups, and can be fatal if not operated upon quickly. Some hematomas are caused by nothing at all-”

“Okay, but is he going to be okay?” Lux interjected, sitting so far on the edge of her seat that she might as well have been standing.

“The required operation involves certain risks, and there’s no guarantee that the damage that’s already been done won’t have permanent effects. But the bottom line is you need brain surgery as soon as possible. You’re at risk for herniation and other serious complications.”

Garen stared at him, the words registering slower than they would have a week ago. “What does the surgery involve?”

“We’ll have to drill a hole in your skull and drain the blood. As with any brain surgery, there’s not a one-hundred percent guarantee, but our first priority is-”

“One-hundred percent guarantee of _what?”_ Lux muttered, her voice high and shaky. When the doctor looked at her, he took a deep breath, and Garen couldn’t tell whether it was because he genuinely sympathized or because he had given bad news so many times before that he had learned to shut off sympathetic emotions in favor of annoyance at patients’ ‘overreactions’.

“One-hundred percent guarantee of survival.”

Garen sat back in his chair and closed his eyes. Then his head drooped, and he collapsed over the armrest.


	11. Chapter 11

“Garen!”

Lux fell out of her chair to kneel beside his, wrapping her arms around him, supporting him before he fell all the way to the floor. Despite his weight she didn’t struggle; perhaps a shot of adrenaline had already kicked in.

The doctor had rounded the desk and was checking Garen’s vitals.

“He probably fainted. I’ll call the nurse and have him transferred to a room until he wakes up.”

“And if he doesn’t?!”

“We cannot perform surgery on him without his consent,” he replied matter-of-factly, moving to the door. “All we can do for now is let him rest; we can only operate if his condition worsens to state of emergency.”

She was quivering now, but not due to physical strain; as the doctor left, she squealed at his backside, “What if he _dies?!”_

Then she remembered that either way, there was a chance of him dying, and she felt like throwing up. Her fingers dug into his back as though hoping to wake him up.

Three nurses, one male, brought a stretcher to the door and lugged Garen onto it. The moment she saw the doctor again, Lux couldn’t shut up.

“So what qualifies a state of emergency, sir? Is it the amount of time before he’s going to die? The number of permanent side effects he’s going to sustain? The amount of money you’re going to make off of the operation-?”

“It’s hospital procedure. I know you’re concerned, but please try to calm down.”

“I _am_ calm, and I’m trying to ask a question. Say that he does survive; exactly what kinds of long-term effects were you referring to?”

“There are a number of complications-”

“List them.”

“Headaches, dizziness, memory loss, seizures, difficulty speaking. There’s no need to panic; about 80% of patients resume their prehematoma level of function over a period of several weeks, assuming the surgery goes well. The mortality rate is about 5%.”

For such a serious issue, five percent felt staggeringly high. The fatality rate of adolescents with chicken pox was somewhere around five percent, and Lux had been hospitalized for that once. Garen could easily be one of the unlucky ones.

“So what happens if he doesn’t improve?” she demanded, deciding for her own sake not to dwell on that five percent. By this time they had reached the hospital room Garen was to rest in, and the doctor was eager to get away from her.

“We can discuss that when the time comes. The first step is to let him recover, okay? You’ll be the first one we contact if anything happens.”

“There’s really _nothing_ you can do now?”

“We’re going to put him on medication that will slow the bleeding. If you want, you can stick around and see if he wakes up in the next couple of hours. If that doesn’t happen, I’ll see what I can do about the surgery.”

“Thank you,” she acquiesced glumly, and once the doctor had gone, she slunk down into one of the chairs beside Garen’s bed. This felt just like the time after the car accident, except worse, because they hadn’t given her any guarantees.

She sighed, pulled her cellphone out, and dialed.

“Hey Dad. I know you’re busy, but please call me back as soon as you can... Garen’s in the hospital.”

She stared at him for several seconds before remembering to hang up, and couldn’t help but feel angry, because it wasn’t fair; he hadn’t done anything wrong. The universe chose the wrong people to get rid of.

“Stop it,” she told herself. _He’s not going to die._

But the mere possibility of it, or of him returning as someone other than himself, was the worst thing she’d ever imagined.

* * *

Three hours later, when Lux was approaching her highest score in _Candy Crush_ and Dad still hadn’t called back yet, Garen turned his head and his blue eyes lit up the room despite their grogginess.

She jumped on him so fast that her phone dropped to the floor. “Thank god.”

“What happened?”

“You heard that you had a hematoma and fainted.”

Garen remembered that he had a hematoma, and felt numb from realizing that the bad dream he’d had wasn’t just a dream after all.

“I have to tell Darius,” he said, but the moment he said it, the situation got a lot worse than it already was, because he had to tell Darius.

He had to tell Darius, who trusted _him,_ of all the people in the world, not to leave, that he could be leaving if things didn’t turn out well here. This was the worst thing that could happen. This wasn’t petty drama; it wasn’t even a love story with a tragic ending. It was a devastating blow to someone who had already experienced serious emotional trauma and, if he survived it, would literally never trust anyone again.

It was easy to _think_ of it that way - to phrase the ending of his story with those words. But it wouldn’t be easy for him.

It would be laying in bed every night haunted by the memories of the worst mistake of his life. This stupid boy with his fake, stupid smile which is rotting to dust in the earth beneath his headstone.

It would be hating every second of every reminder of him, looking at the people of the world and remembering with more numb clarity than ever before that none of them will ever be worth it, because they’ll all just be gone in the end.

It would be seeing someone else and feeling his heart beat quicken for the first time since that stupid boy’s rotting smile, and reminding himself to run as fast as he could from that happy feeling, because of the minute possibility that something could go wrong.

It would be realizing one day that there was no point, if there’s no happiness to be found in the world, and looking off the top floor at the busy street below, and contemplating.

That was only one possible future, but it was the one that flashed through Garen’s mind in a series of images that broke his heart, that made him so angry he could have drilled a hole in his own skull, fully conscious, if that would save him, just so he could teach this person that he loved that there was so much more to live for than one stupid boy’s rotting smile, and before that, two phantoms who were born on the doorstep of the orphanage and even now, travelled with him, painting the entire world in shades of human ugliness: indulgence, apathy, selfishness, hate. He wasn’t done here until he had exorcised those demons for good.

“No, you have to get your surgery. As soon as possible. If you faint again and can’t sign off for it, they won’t do it,” Lux said.

“Is today Saturday?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll have surgery on Monday.”

“Garen…”

“There’s something I have to take care of before going through a risky operation like that.”

It was one the rare cases where Garen’s steadfast tone singlehandedly overpowered Lux’s stubbornness, so that she lapsed into silence, and he got up and headed toward the front desk.

* * *

Draven opened the front door Sunday morning to a faceful of flowers, promptly gasped, and gushed, “For _me?!”_

By this time Garen had grown accustomed to these antics, so he simply smiled as Draven stepped aside and pointed down the hall. “He’s in his room, probably still asleep.”

“Have you made breakfast yet? If not, I’ll cook.”

“Just finished mixing the flapjacks. What’s the occasion?”

“Actually,” Garen responded softly, setting the bouquet down on the dining table while he grabbed a glass. “I’ve got some bad news.”

There was a pause as Draven opened the silverware drawer and brandished a knife. “I hope you’re not planning on leaving.”

“No, I wouldn’t… but the world might have other plans for me. I’m getting brain surgery.”

“Shit, what happened?”

“It’s nothing serious; just... don’t say anything about it. I’m going to tell him later.”

Draven watched from the side as he poured the batter, gauging from his expression that it was serious - serious enough to elicit a bouquet of flowers and a pancake in the shape of a crudely-formed heart. But he didn’t say anything because he trusted Garen, because Darius trusted Garen, and Darius never trusted anyone.

With nothing to do left in the kitchen, and the TV set still gone, he sauntered off towards his room. “Let me know if you need anything.”

“Thanks.”

The stack looked a little funny once it was sitting atop a plate, since the curves of the hearts didn’t match up, but a slightly closer inspection would reveal them to the eater. _It’s the thought that counts._

Garen didn’t _really_ believe in the validity of that expression, but he was no cook, so this arrangement would have to do.

In Darius’s room, he placed the glass with the flowers on the desk and the pancakes on the bedside table. Then he climbed on top and kissed him until he opened his eyes.

“I hope you weren’t having a good dream.”

“Hm.” He pulled Garen down beside him and hid his face in Garen’s chest. “This one’s better.”

“Is it?”

“Except for the fact that I’m awake on a Sunday.”

“I made you pancakes.”

“Why?”

“Because I wanted to.”

After a time, Darius sat up, dragging his hands up and down his face as though it would somehow accustom his eyes to being open. They passed around the room, pausing on the flowers, and casting a look of suspicion over Garen on the way back. But he didn’t say anything about it; he picked up his plate and began to eat.

“What about you?”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Are these hearts?”

Garen smiled innocuously. Darius stared at him and marvelled at the naivete of this overgrown child, who thought he could leave all the evidence around that today was out of the ordinary and not have anyone catch on.

“I wanted to box at the gym today,” Darius said. “Ever tried it?”

“With Jarvan, occasionally. I’m no MMA champion.”

“Let’s go, before everyone gets out of church.”

“You’re not planning to beat me up, are you?”

“Gloves are for sissies.” He stood up, set his plate down on top of a stack of three other unwashed plates, and pulled on a pair of gym shorts.

“Wait, you mean…”

“I’m kidding,” Darius said, in response to the blank gape on Garen’s face, which was more a product of excitation than trepidation, but he didn’t know that. He was wondering what it would take to find out the big secret, if passing time at the gym wasn’t a problem at all.

In the car, while “Crazy Bitch” by Buckcherry was pounding softly in the background, Garen found himself imaging specks of blood on the knuckles gripping the steering wheel, calling back a romanticized memory of the white hot jolt that had rippled through his jaw that time outside the science trailers. That kind of force sent a different message besides just pain.

Fury. Domination.

And something about the look in Darius’s eyes when he was in such an animal state sent Garen’s body into an absolute riot.

“Something interesting about my windshield, Crownguard?”

He was standing outside, muscled arm poised oh-so-beautifully at the top of the door of the truck (those fucking tanktops showed off his shoulders so well), and Garen was staring blankly ahead. The old antagonistic label woke him from his own imagination and reminded him that if anyone from school were to see them here together, they would have to pretend it was by chance.

This wasn’t the school gym, however, so that was less likely to happen than it otherwise would have been.

“You have a membership here?” Garen asked, as they approached the front desk, since he couldn’t help but wonder what people chose to spend their money on when they didn’t have very much of it.

“I got it for free after winning the MMA tournament. I can bring a guest once a month.”

There was a large room past the main section of the gym with a slightly upraised ring in the corner and a line of punching bags against the wall. No one was there except them. Darius passed him a pair of gloves and stepped into the ring.

“I haven’t fought in a long time,” Garen said, but he was already following suit.

“Why do you think I gave you the competition gloves?”

He noticed that his gloves were light and open-fingered, while Darius’s were heavily padded all the way around.

“I can’t use these against you.”

“I only have one pair of each,” he explained, deciding not to mention that competition gloves were more for the user’s protection than the opponent’s. “Before you start worrying, find out if you can even touch me first.”

They were both grinning as they took stance, Garen momentarily forgetting that this kind of physical activity might not be good for his condition, because he _had_ to find out if he could land a punch.

So he swung first and saw a glove heading towards his face but felt a jab in his ribs instead, sending him teetering backwards. Darius was fast.

“Better luck next time?”

 _And_ he was cocky. He seemed more alive now than he ever did in the world of normal activities; maybe that was why he fought. Garen had to wonder how much of himself was bloodthirsty as well, given the kind of thoughts that he had, the kind of people he always found himself lured towards.

He tried again, but this time he thought quicker; he feigned forward and lunged to the side, and _then_ threw his punch, Darius grunting before he retaliated - just a swift turn and shove, and Garen’s own momentum careened him all the way to the edge of the ring.

“You fight like you fuck,” Darius remarked, not seeming to notice, after-the-fact, the bruise that would form on his left side. “Reckless and noisy.”

“If only I practiced every day,” Garen replied, stumbling back on balance. “Then I’d also leave you breathless.”

Then they both ran at each other, Garen’s right arm retracted for an obvious punch, but Darius swept it aside and pressed him back to where he had been at the edge of the ring and kissed him. Just like the first time they fought, he was reckless and noisy, and his stubborn grin said he was oblivious to everything in the world except the goodness that Darius couldn’t see, and for that Darius envied him so much that he couldn’t resist him.

He didn’t notice that something was wrong until Garen’s fingers dug into his arm strongly enough to suggest that he couldn’t support himself. His lips were slack from breathlessness - not a symptom of passion but of physical desperation. He was falling backwards through the ropes of the ring.

Darius looped his arms under Garen’s and yanked him back in, and they fell into a pile on top of each other.

“Garen,” he muttered, angry in confusion. “What the _hell.”_ It took all of his remaining effort to flip them both over and push the sticky mess of hair off of Garen’s forehead. He was conscious, but dazed, as though he wasn’t quite living in his own body.

“Fuck,” Darius said, trying to stand up, but Garen grabbed his wrist weakly at the last second. “I’m calling an ambulance. Nobody collapses like that after a single round.”

“Don’t. I already know what’s wrong.”

Darius stared at him, quick to comprehend but slow to react, because he hadn’t expected a secret like this, and getting betrayed isn’t easy.

“Help me sit up.”

“Tell me _now,”_ Darius said, unmoving, and Garen saw in his eyes that he wasn’t doing any favors until the truth was out, even if it meant he was to lie there in pain.

“I have something called a subdural hematoma. I’m getting brain surgery tomorrow morning, at ten. The success rate isn’t one-hundred percent.”

The response was instantaneous. “You’re lying.”

“Darius… Please help me sit up,” he said, attempting to do so himself, and Darius didn’t help him. He was slowly gaining his strength back. “I’m not lying. I wish I were.”

“How long have you fucking known?”

“Since yesterday.” He felt like a dog grovelling at his master’s feet, begging forgiveness for a mess he hadn’t made. “I’m sorry, Darius… I never asked for this. I never wanted to put you through this kind of trouble.”

_The success rate isn’t one-hundred percent._

Darius felt a great clamp pushing down on his chest, seizing his stomach, making his legs feel weak, and his body’s first response was to fill his veins instead with anger, to start convincing himself this very second that this stupid, betraying fuck had never been worth his time.

“I’m busy tomorrow. The anarchists are taking over Noxon,” he said simply, but inside him was turmoil.

“Taking over? That’s… You can’t do that, Darius. You’ll get arrested, this time for a serious offense.”

“No one’s going to get arrested.”

Garen swallowed, understanding that this wasn’t the time to argue about something like that. “I want you to be there when I go into surgery.”

“I can’t.”

He was sitting up now, and he rested his head against Darius’s leg, expressing as much affection as he possibly could from this position. It wasn’t much, and Darius had spent the last couple of seconds rendering himself immune to it anyway.

“I n _eed_ you to be there,” Garen muttered.

“I should take you home.”

“Darius-”

He was pulled upward, his arm wrapped around Darius’s shoulders, and guided down the steps of the ring. The front desk clerk asked them as they passed if everything was alright. Darius muttered a positive reply and continued out to the car without pause, without feeling, without mercy. His demeanor made it difficult for Garen to think of anything else to say until they were on the road.

“Could we please talk about this?”

“I can’t go to your operation, so good fucking luck.”

Garen’s mind was still fuzzy, and he was trying as hard as he could to think, but suddenly they were idling outside his apartment and his mind hadn’t taken a single step forward.

He looked at Darius, who in reality was glaring out the windshield with one hand atop the wheel, and saw him staring off the top floor at the city streets below, contemplating. He couldn’t let that future exist. He couldn’t.

“I want to be there for you for the rest of your life. I want to wake up next to you every morning and protect you from the things that make you so unhappy. That’s what I want, more than anything, but I can’t decide what happens tomorrow. I can’t decide whether a drunk driver crashes into me someday, or whether a disease chooses me as its next victim. And I need you to understand that if something like that were to happen to me, I’d still have loved you more than anyone else in this world. I’d want you to forget about me and move on, if that’s what it takes for you to be happy. Do you understand?”

Darius looked at him apathetically. He was so good at doing that, at switching his emotions, or at least obscuring them so well from the outside world that they seemed to no longer exist at all, and it hurt so fucking much.

“You don’t have to speak to me like a child,” he said.

“I’m just… I’m just trying to make it clear that bad things happen to good people, and it’s not your fault. It’s-”

“Like I said,” Darius interrupted, but he didn’t bother repeating himself.

“Would you come inside with me?”

“Your roommate shouldn’t see me.”

“I’ll introduce you to him, Darius… I’m tired of hiding this.”

“You only say that now because you won’t live to suffer the consequences of dating me.”

“What?” Garen placed his hand on Darius’s arm, but it was shaken off like a fly in the spring heat. “Listen… The chances of me dying tomorrow are slim, but I need you to prepare for the worst. Just in case.”

“Get the fuck out of my car.”

“I won’t leave it like this-”

“Get the hell out of my fucking car.”

“Would you think about someone other than yourself for once?!”

Darius said it again, but this time he screamed it, and Garen was gone before the conflict could get physical, because there was no reasoning with him, nothing he could do to break down a wall like that once it was up, no matter how much it hurt.

He watched from the sidewalk as the run-down black truck revved out of the parking lot and seemingly out of his life, if he were to survive tomorrow. He wasn’t sure what he had done to deserve an ending like this. All he had wanted was to save the person he loved from himself, and then his brain had started bleeding. He was twenty years old, perfectly healthy, and he might die tomorrow, a month or so after falling in love.

He felt like he was beginning to see how Darius could hate this world so much.

* * *

Past a front door hanging precariously off one hinge was a living room in complete disarray. The couch was overturned, papers and magazines strewn everywhere, broken dishes littering the stained carpet. Down the hallway, an entire desk lay on its side, the carpet beside it waterlogged, covered with the remnants of a vase of flowers.

The moment that vase had toppled over and split into shards of glass, Darius had happened upon an idea. It was an idea that was always present, but never at the forefront - an idea he had thought was silly the first time he read _Romeo and Juliet_ , but later realized its reasons. There was one way to escape when life didn’t feel worth living, and for the past several years he must have forced himself to forget about it, because it was too hard to live with that possibility and not go through with it.

He had picked up a shard and dragged it down his wrist, and the moment Draven saw the blood was the moment his panicked mind made his body strong enough to grab his older brother’s arm and actually succeed in moving it. He had tried to stop him earlier; he had pushed and pulled and screamed, all to no avail. But broken furniture was one motivation, and saving a life was entirely another.

They slammed into the wall beside his bedroom doorway, Draven latched onto the hand with the glass in such a way that it couldn’t do any more damage. “Please stop,” he pleaded, praying to a god he didn’t believe in that the blood wasn’t gushing fast enough to kill. “Just… please, let go of the glass. You can’t do this to me, Dar. You’re all I’ve got.”

He let go of the glass and collapsed to the floor. Draven fell with him, feeling convulsions wrack his heart and willing himself to keep breathing steadily. _Don’t panic, it won’t help._ He let go and looked over. The cut wasn’t deep enough; Darius was still conscious, just breaking down. He thanked a god he didn’t believe in, pulled off his shirt, and wrapped it as tightly as he could around his brother’s bleeding wrist.

He had attempted things like this before, but not in a long time - not since the years that he should have been in middle school and he found potential weapons in the garbage, and Draven had been too young to understand what it meant to see his older brother trembling as he held a can top near his wrist.

Draven’s mere presence had been enough to stop him back then, since he never would have knowingly left his younger brother behind; he only made those attempts when he wasn’t in his right mind. Now Draven was old enough to survive without him, so it didn’t matter.

This was the first time he had cried since then, as well. He cried in quick tremors and sharp takes of air, rather than in moans, but the fact that he was always so strong made it painful to see him cry at all. Painful, and scary.

_He didn’t succeed. It’s over now. After this he won’t try it again._

But it was much easier for Draven to tell himself that than to actually believe it, and he didn’t know what he would do if he ever found his brother not breathing in a pool of his own blood.

“Tell me what happened, Dar. Everything okay?” he asked, knowing that everything was not, in fact, okay, and it probably had something to do with the thing that Garen had mentioned earlier.

“There’s no fucking point,” he muttered, voice low and labored, but now steady.

“C’mon, don’t say that. You mean a lot to me, you know. And to him, too.”

“He’s dead. And even if he’s not, I don’t want to live anymore. What’s the fucking point, when everything I care about gets taken away? Everything. I can’t live my entire life wondering when our last day will be.”

“He made you happy, didn’t he?”

He didn’t answer for a long while, and when did, the tremors threatened. “Yes. I didn’t even tell him.”

_I didn’t tell him I loved him because I thought that saying it would make it true. Turns out it already was._

“Well, that’s great. It’s really great. But you can’t depend on someone else for happiness. You gotta find your own reason for living,” Draven said, expressing a wisdom that seemed beyond him, that was always hidden by an outer facade of silliness and narcissism. Perhaps he had found his own reason for living, and it was part of the reason he felt so comfortable acting the way he did.

Darius had never had time to think about himself, because he’d been forced to spend his life reaching for necessary goals that should never have been his responsibility; he had never been happy, because he had always been living for someone else, always driven by necessity rather than personal desire, and only in college had he discovered ways to alleviate the weight of the world, if only for one night, or one hour, with some guy who would forget about him in a couple more nights.

He hadn’t noticed it before, but Garen had taken that weight off his shoulders and let him truly live for awhile, only to drop it back on at the last second and remind him of just how much he hated this godforsaken fucking universe.

Maybe tomorrow, in Noxon, there would be accident. Maybe he’d get shot and Draven wouldn’t have to live with the fact that he had killed himself, only that he had died.

“I’m fine. I’ll get over it.”

“You’re not fine. Look at what you did to the apartment. Look at what you did to yourself.”

“It’ll heal.”

Darius looked at him in the stern way that he looked at strangers, or at anyone who he wanted to hide himself from - even Garen, sometimes. It didn’t seem like a good sign.

“Let me clean up,” he insisted, snorting unattractively as he wiped the moisture from his lips. “I need a fucking tissue.”

Draven stood up and got one, along with a bottle of hydrogen peroxide from under the kitchen sink. He tried to convince himself that Darius wasn’t lying, but his gut said otherwise. He feared what would happen if he looked away.

The blood hadn’t soaked through the shirt yet, which meant that the wound wasn’t serious. Draven was grateful for that, but it still pained him to untie the fabric and look at it. He soaked peroxide into a wad of tissue and dabbed along the incision. Darius didn’t even wince; he stared sidelong at nothing in particular, perhaps in the process of building up his walls again, because only Draven could see him this way. No one else.

“Could I sleep in your bed tonight?” Draven asked, finishing off the job with a bandage (the only reason they had those was because Darius liked to fight).

“Are you twelve?”

“There’s nothing childish about sharing body warmth.”

“In spring, there is.”

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Draven said, helping Darius to his feet, and they spent the rest of the day cleaning up the mess he’d made.

The warmth of Draven’s back against his side that night served only to remind him of the person he didn’t want to think about. The person who’d claimed to want to wake up every morning next to him. Him, with all his hatred and insensitivity, and useless angst. Why him?

This person deserved someone who would smile with him and laugh with him and frolic with him in the wonder of the world, living for the sake of living. It made no sense for a person like that to chase after a person like him.

And he could die tomorrow wondering what he’d done so terribly wrong as to make a person who didn’t even deserve him, reject him. This wonderful person could die filled with unresolved regret.

Darius searched for a convincing reason not to care. If Garen survived, which he probably would, he would be better off hating him and finding someone else. If he didn’t survive, then by definition he would have no regrets. Maybe, in the first place, it had all been an act.

But all of these thoughts came back to the same question.

Why _him?_

* * *

In the private waiting room before the surgery, Garen’s mother asked him how school had been going, as if this were an ordinary day, and the chance to ask again tomorrow, as parents do, was guaranteed. The simple fact that she and her husband were there was proof that this wasn’t an ordinary day.

“It’s going fine,” Garen said. “I’ve been looking into a summer internship at Noxon City Hall.”

Now he was thinking of the anarchist take-over, of Darius rotting behind the bars of a jail cell for the next ten years, and he wasn’t sure whether mentioning the internship was the cause or effect of those thoughts. He kept glancing over his shoulder as though hoping that Darius would come bursting into the room, declare that he had made a terrible mistake, and confess his undying love right then and there. Needless to say, that wouldn’t happen.

“That’s great, honey,” Mrs. Crownguard replied, in the manner of a person who wants to interested but holds no common knowledge to discuss the topic at hand.

But Garen’s father, Mr. City Manager, knew plenty about government, so father and son discussed the potential internship as though it were an ordinary day until Lux stood up and protested, “I can’t stand it! He’s about to go into brain surgery and we’re sitting around talking about politics! Doesn’t anyone have anything meaningful to say?!”

There were several seconds of silence, more out of shock than lack of meaningful words, before Garen began, “Lux, it’s okay. The chances of anything going wrong are small-”

“But they’re _there,_ so I’d appreciate if we didn’t act like they weren’t!”

At that point a nurse opened the door and stated that they were ready for him. Lux scoffed before hugging him so tightly he could feel his own heartbeat, which was a feat considering their difference in size. Their parents followed suit.

As he lay down on the operating table and felt the needle prick his arm, he focused on the beep of the heart monitor. He focused on hearing that same steady beat when he woke up. If he focused on that, everything would turn out alright.

The steady beep, beep, like the police sirens that would take him away. The beep that would go flat, and tear them apart at the time that they most needed each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As of now, I'm planning on two more chapters. Thank you all in advance for reading and leaving such wonderful comments. It's you guys who motivate me to keep writing. <3
> 
> Please look at this fucking gorgeous artwork I found of my bbies because it's basically the most beautiful fucking thing I've ever seen: http://nautiliark.tumblr.com/post/112768035626 (Also the artist is awesome.)
> 
> Also, please listen to this song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfxP4ORIIOY
> 
> It definitely will not make you cry. I mean, it didn't make me cry. No siree, no tears over here.


	12. Chapter 12

He didn’t remember waking up. In fact, he only remembered the first hour or so after waking up in a series of blurred moments, before everything became clear. They asked him to raise this leg or curl that finger, and he could, but somehow it took a lot more effort than it normally would have.

Beep. Beep.

_I survived._

“That’s right, you did. There’s no need to be afraid of surgery under our care,” said the nurse, a tiny pinch afflicting the crook of his arm as she pulled the needle out of it. She kept answering strange questions that he didn’t remember answering, before finally leaving off with, “I’m going to bring in your visitors now, alright?”

He closed his eyes and opened them and suddenly Lux’s arms were around him again, gentle this time. From behind her approached a man in an expensive brown coat who looked like him except smaller, and an athletic blonde woman in a colorful spring dress.

“Who’s that?” he said, pointing dumbly at her, failing to follow the chain of logic that led from her holding onto the arm of the man in the brown coat - whom he _did_ recognize - to her being his wife.

“Oh my god,” she gasped. “He doesn’t remember me. My baby boy lost his memory of his own mother.”

“That’s most likely a temporary side effect, ma’am,” the nurse informed her. “His mind’s a bit boggled.”

“You remember _me,_ right?” Lux asked, as though forgetting one’s sister defied the laws of science. In a way, at least for them, it did.

He nodded. “How are finals?”

“Finals were weeks ago, Garen,” she giggled, her previous worry appeased. “But I did do well.”

At that point Garen’s lips lingered apart as he stared at something past her shoulder, and he grinned so wide he looked insane.

He attempted, promptly and violently, to get out of bed, which would have surely resulted in a fall; all three of them and the nurse lunged forward to place their hands against his shoulders and hold him back in place.

“You came!” he said, though his energy drifted off at the very end; he had become groggy from the small physical effort he had made. “I’m so happy… You came.”

They let the fourth visitor through to his side. His fingers reached forward and hooked themselves onto two of a slightly darker shade. Like leaves getting caught in a grapevine. It was so natural that the receiver couldn’t conscientiously reject it, because he had hardly noticed it.

“I sorted out my priorities.”

Garen’s head was drooping sideways against his pillow, eyelids half shut, with a smile on his face.

He slept for another hour.

They were all chatting in the visitor chairs when he woke up, except for Darius, who had pulled a chair up to his bedside and had an magazine open in his lap, one hand still resting on the bed where Garen had grabbed onto it.

“I’m thirsty,” Garen said.

“The nurse is coming back soon.”

“Why aren’t you socializing?”

“You wouldn’t let go.”

He uncurled his fingers, and Darius rubbed the feeling back into the two he had been holding for the past hour. He closed the magazine and set it back on the side table.

By this time the others had noticed that Garen was awake, and Garen had remembered that they didn’t exactly know he wasn’t straight yet. Naturally, the first thing he did was try to confess.

“I have something to say.”

Lux interposed, “Garen, I… sorta had to tell them.”

“I am not exclusive to-” He stopped. “Oh.”

The nurse passed by the door, glanced at him, and continued walking.

His parents looked at each other before Mr. Crownguard stated his response: “Funny thing, how life-threatening surgeries remind you to be grateful that your son’s still alive.”

“I have to admit, I’m surprised!” his wife added. “None of the obvious signs were there.”

“Anyway. This fellow here,” Mr. Crownguard continued cheerfully, gesturing at Darius. “ _He’d_ better keep his act up or we’re going to have some complaints.”

“Thank you,” Garen said. He might have been more responsive to the significance of this revelation if he didn’t feel like he were stoned out of his mind, and if his throat wasn’t burning for nourishment.

The nurse came in and handed him a small bowl of ice chips. “We can’t give you water just yet because you’ll probably throw it up, so munch on these for now. Try to get plenty of rest in the next couple of days so we can let you go home.”

“I’m...fine, then?” Garen asked.

“Perfectly alright. The surgery went smoothly.”

It was like a good dream except that everything hurt. Hazy, confused, head and throat aching. Everything hurt except the fact that Darius was here, and Garen couldn’t remember exactly why; he just had this feeling that it was significant, somehow.

He was also having a hard time keeping track of the conversation at hand.

“Who’s mom looks like what?” he asked, in an attempt to catch back up.

“You, silly. I said you look a _mummy_ with that bandage around your head.”

He held his arms out and moaned, which also hurt, but it made them laugh. And he had to be thankful he still had the power to do so.

* * *

 On the way home, the sun rose through the trees lining the road and left spots in his eyes that stung like pin pricks. Not ordinary. Garen wondered when this whole superhuman senses side effect would fade away, along with the rest of them: constant headache, loss of hours as though they were seconds, lack of complete physical control. The past couple of days in the hospital, learning what he could and couldn’t do, had been frightening, but the good thing was that they had passed really quickly. He estimated he had slept for ninety percent of the time.

To avoid the sun’s glare, he stared at the dashboard, and noticed a crumpled blue-gray dress shirt sitting there as though it’d been discarded in a rush.

“Since when do you wear anything like this?” he asked, picking it up. Definitely his size and not Draven’s.

“You know how I wasn’t there when you went into surgery?”

Garen nodded. He hadn’t thought anything of it, since he’d been so happy that Darius had come at all.

“I was wearing that because I knew your parents would probably be there, but of all the days when this worthless pile of shit we’re sitting in could have broken down, it chose that morning. So I had to take it off and jog the rest of the way, arrive there late, sweating my ass off, and effectively make the opposite impression.”

“I… I think it says something that my parents trusted you to take care of my recovery.”

Darius ‘hmphed’ stubbornly. “I guess so.”

“You really did all that for me?”

They parked outside his apartment, and Darius passed him a look that said he had something to tell him, but instead of telling him he got out of the car.

Garen wouldn’t be able to walk on his own for awhile. That’s what they said about all the side effects - that they would go away ‘after awhile’. Of course, there wasn’t a one-hundred percent guarantee.

He kept telling himself that the surgery itself had turned out well for him, so all these non-guarantees would too. But it was scary, not knowing for sure. Not feeling well for days on end. Not being able to form a certain word when he wanted to, or keep track of a simple conversation, or will his legs to walk like they used to. He knew how to do it but his body wouldn’t react. And then, after simply _trying,_ he would be tired enough to sleep for a day.

It took them four minutes to get inside and onto Darius’s bed, step by agonizing step - not agonizing because it was painful, but because sometimes his legs just wouldn’t fucking move. He would send a signal through his brain to move one foot forward, and if he was lucky, it would scoot forward a couple of inches. It was like learning to walk all over again, except worse, because he already knew how to walk.

“I never thought I’d say something like this,” he said, once his head was against the pillow and he didn’t have to worry so much about getting stuck if his brain took a break from functioning. “I need help… getting through this. I’ve never felt so panicked.”

“Why?”

“You don’t know what it feels like to not have control over your own body.”

“What can I do to help you?”

“Just… come here.”

He moved from the edge of the bed to lay in the crook of Garen’s arm, head resting on his chest and hearing the slightly accelerated heartbeat. “I should tell you something.”

“What is it?”

“When you told me what you had, I trashed my apartment and tried to kill myself with a shard of glass. Draven stopped me. I didn’t want to live in a world where things can be so easily taken away. I hate not being able to care for fear that it will be worthless in the end. We all die anyways.” He thought he heard the heartbeat accelerate a little faster. “I don’t know what it’s like to not be in control of my own body, but I know what it’s like to not be in control of my own mind. And I’m telling you this because you need to know how fucked up I am if I’m going to trust you enough to tell you I love you.”

That time it definitely accelerated. And he didn’t need to think about it to know that his own heart was physically hurting him out of fear to say such a thing out loud, but it was too late. He won this time. He said it.

“You… Are you just saying it, or do you really… ?”

“I mean it.”

Garen raised his arm and used the momentum to turn his body onto the side, where he could wrap his arm around the other and pull him close.

A couple of seconds later, he said, “Wait… What were we talking about?”

“You’re saying that so you can hear it again.”

“It was worth a shot.”

“You could have died,” Darius muttered, quietly as though he were saying it to himself, as a reminder that there were worse things than fear. “I love you.”

“One more thing,” Garen added. “I thought you were going to that… thing, in Noxon.”

“I’d be in jail right now if I had.”

“What happened?”

“They fought back. We didn’t have as much support as we thought we would, so the national government swept in and arrested everyone before we could make hostage threats. Two or three members of the Noxon City Council died, but otherwise we didn’t make much of a dent. Around fifty students are facing a charge of twenty years or more.”

For the sake of peace, Garen didn’t chastise him for brushing aside two or three deaths like common errands in a great cause. Maybe he would mention it later, when his head wasn’t threatening to burst.

He also had to remember that most of Darius’s friends would be in jail for a long, long time. That didn’t justify joy in murder, but it justified offering some degree of sympathy to the one feeling that joy. He truly believed his cause was the right one.

“Well, I’m glad you chose me,” Garen said.

There were so many reasons one could pick out for him not to be glad, one of them being that very source of contention that made Garen doubt how humane Darius was. Most people steered clear of a person like that. How many of them acknowledged the circumstances leading to such a mindset? How many of them realized that everyone was capable of brutality? That it’s a human instinct, just like compassion, running in some people more strongly than others, but always there.

Garen had it too. Even if he didn’t want to hurt anyone, he could take pleasure in imagining blood for the sake of blood. Darius was more justified than him, in that sense, because he actually had a reason.

“I love you,” Garen said. “Thank god you’re not in prison. I don’t know how I’d live without you now.”

Life without him would be dull routine. Going to class, listening to Jarvan rant, trying to convince himself he was actually motivated by future career prospects. That he had a reason to keep trying other than the person lying beside him, inspiring in him passion and fury and everything else that made you feel alive. He wondered if being together would ever cause them to become alike, to stop disagreeing about the things they disagreed about, and secretly hoped it wouldn’t.

It wouldn’t because they were two fires burning on endless supplies of different fuels. In other words, they were stubborn as shit.

“Don’t say that,” Darius said.

“Say what? That I love you?”

“Don’t pepper me with cliche affections. I’m bound to think you’re full of shit.”

“I’m not, Darius. I think I need you.”

All at once, he was on his back again and Darius’s lips were rugged ghosts against his neck, sending shockwaves just by brushing. Holy hell, if neck kisses felt like this then what about _sex._

He felt his shorts moving down his hips, his manhood meeting cool air and then the overwhelming warm pleasure of a hand.

“I haven’t had sex for a week,” Darius complained.

“I- Ahh… I don’t think I can handle-”

“You sure about that?”

Darius lowered his head and it was all pressure and hotness and pleasure - oh god, _pleasure,_ like he’d never felt it before - for a good thirty seconds before he came. He was shaking hard and the world was spinning and he felt pinpricks in his eyes where the black dots were, obscuring an amused Darius still licking the white off his lips.

“I…” Garen started despite his breathlessness, never one to let strain succumb him to silence. “Everything is so… intense. Like new. Like…”

“Don’t injure yourself. You came practically as soon as I put my mouth on it.”

His reaction was delayed by several seconds. “I did?”

Darius smiled. A real smile. This time it didn’t look unnatural on him. In place of the anger that usually wrinkled his brow was amusement, and it made him so handsome. Garen etched the moment into his mind in an image he hoped he would never forget.

Then exhaustion pulled his eyelids shut, and he felt a kiss grace his forehead and the weight on the bed beside him lift away.

* * *

A week later, he was reading _Pride and Prejudice_ on the sofa. The door opened and Darius threw his bag into the corner. His footsteps toward the kitchen were heavy enough to confirm Garen’s suspicion that something had managed to piss him off today, as well.

“How was school?”

“My professor thinks he knows shit about poverty in this country. I don’t understand how such a fascist Republican shithead managed to get hired at a public university.”

“Did you tell him how you felt about his shitheaded views?”

“I had to leave or else I would have punched him.”

Garen watched as he chugged a tall glass of water. “You know, for such an intelligent person, you spend a lot of time being angry.”

“Look the fuck around.” The glass made a threatening clink as it met the countertop, but didn’t break. “There’s a lot to be angry about.”

“Look around at the things you have to be thankful for.”

“Easy for you to say when you naturally shit sunshine every morning.”

Garen couldn’t help but smile. “Before yesterday I couldn’t even get to the toilet without help. Life’s a struggle, but you can always find the positives inbetween.”

That was exactly the kind of sunshine-shitting comment that made Darius’s blood boil rather than cooling him down. The frustrating part was that when blood started pumping while Garen was around, it had a tendency to go straight south, and by this time he hadn’t had sex in two weeks.

He sat on the edge of the couch, headbutted the book out of the way, and shoved his arms around Garen’s torso. “I can’t believe you’re actually reading that.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“Boring as hell.”

“I don’t think so. I’ve been through an entire chapter without falling asleep, so that’s a good sign,” he pointed out. Since the surgery he’d been building up his brain tolerance one page at a time. Everything made him tired, but less and less tired as time went on. “There’s something I want to ask you.”

“Save it,” Darius said, leaning back. “Put your arms around my neck.”

He did, but before he had the chance to ask why, Darius’s arms were under his legs and he was being carried toward the bedroom. _Carried_ by another human being, for the first time in eight or so years. Two hundred and fifty pounds of muscle - though that number had probably gone down some with the recent lack of physical activity. It felt nice.

Darius was slightly winded by the time they collapsed on top of each other on the bed, but that could have easily been passed off as a symptom of arousal. He pressed his lips to Garen’s and ran his hand up his side.

“Today?” he asked, though he didn’t want it to be a question. They’d been building up to actual sex every day through blowjobs and the like, and he wasn’t sure how many more days he could take. His hand was already in Garen’s pants, groping his ass, and he recaptured Garen’s lips before he could answer.

“I’m not sure,” he said when they parted, blue eyes half-closed and lips parted; that expression was so _tempting._ “But don’t stop now.”

Darius shoved his shirt up and for a split second Garen felt fear. He felt the rough hands slide downwards and yank at his bottoms, scratching along the way - but they were only ghosts. He looked up with wide eyes and saw that Darius was watching him rather than focused elsewhere, felt his hands slide downward over what remained of the old markings, undoing his shorts rather than forcing them. Darius opened his mouth as though he were going to say something - perhaps a comment on Garen’s surprised expression - but didn’t. It was as though he knew, that he acknowledged what he’d done without ever pointing out the evidence of it. That he was sorry.

“Come on,” Garen said. His shirt came off, then his shorts and boxers, with kisses inbetween. A hand crept along his thigh and underneath it, pressed inward and sent a shiver down his spine. He had to remember how to relax again. Darius treating him this way made it so much harder, when it should have done the opposite. He felt like a godforsaken virgin schoolgirl, trembling like this.

He relaxed, and the digit pressed deep inside and sent a shiver through his entire body. _Oh god, that’s it._

It pressed in and out, shockwave after shockwave. He was gripping the back of Darius’s shirt for dear life.

“Darius,” he groaned. “If you keep this up you won’t get to- Ahh… You’ll finish me.”

The fingers withdrew, slick with lube, though between all the sensations he couldn’t remember the exact moment Darius had applied it. Garen relaxed back onto the bed; he felt like he had been floating, and now his muscles ached. Darius undressed himself.

“I’ll go slow,” he said, and bit by bit, he pressed inside. For several moments there was pain, but the feeling of his body so close made it worth it. The smooth curve of his spine, the tanned shoulders pressed against his lips, the hands gripping him not in ferocious possession but in affection, and that made all the difference.

He moved so slowly that the pain faded as quickly as it had come. It was replaced by a pleasure building more intensely than he had ever remembered it could.

“Darius, oh god, fuck me.”

All he could think was that he wanted to be closer, _closer,_ but he couldn’t; he already felt the rugged warmth of this beautiful man’s skin against his lips and against his chest and inside of him. Inside of every limb, every muscle, every vein. He gripped tighter, begging please, _please_ fuck me, oh god, fuck me until I can’t take it anymore.

For a second he couldn’t think, and warmth spilled out across his stomach, but Darius kept going.

“Give me… a little longer,” he muttered, so Garen lay there, gripping tightly, and felt the slightly dulled pleasure pound through him again and again, and a minute later he watched Darius's eyes glaze over and his lips curl out in a groan of pleasure, felt his thrusts grow more and more desperate and finally ease to a stop, listened as the final moan culminated in a heavy breath, and then they were all but silent, and the heat in the room hinted at summer.

They lay there long after they had caught their breath, Darius’s head resting on his shoulder and his backside fully exposed; the blankets had been kicked off a long time ago. Normally he dressed again immediately afterward; Garen hadn’t ever really noticed until now, the one time he didn’t. Normally he also went back to his own business.

Maybe he was tired since it’d been a long time. That was a reasonable explanation. Or maybe he thought Garen having been in the hospital entailed some sort of special treatment.

“You don’t have to lay here,” Garen said. “But before you go, let me ask you-”

“What, you _want_ me to leave?”

“No, not at all, I…” He sighed, trying to sort out his thoughts, but as always they were only becoming more and more muddled. And giving him another headache. “I just thought you might have something better to be doing.”

“You’re the most important thing to me.”

It was not only the statement that took him by surprise, but the certainty of it, the immediacy. Like it was the most natural thing in the world for him to say it, when he had spent the majority of his life - and their relationship - insulting and hiding from people rather than confiding in them.

He didn’t say anything else, even as Garen waited for an explanation.

“I wanted to ask you… to come to prom with me.”

At that, he raised his head, displaying an expression of disgust. “Prom? Really?”

Garen smiled. So he _was_ feeling like himself today.

“Prom,” he confirmed. “You can’t say no… Because I already bought the tickets.”

“Are you serious?”

“One hundred percent.”

His head dropped back to its original resting position, and his voice became muffled. “All those people are going to see that you’re dating… me.”

“That’s the idea.”

“I can’t.”

“You can,” Garen said, easing onto his side to wrap an arm around him, to try to gauge something out of his expression, but he was hiding his face against the mattress like a child. “It’s tomorrow night. You don’t have to dance, you just have to come with me. That’s all I want.”

“Tomorrow night?!” He showed his face then, and he looked both angry and terrified - an expression that Garen had never seen on him before. It was… cute. “I don’t have a suit.”

“You don’t need one; it’s fifties themed. Anyway, Lux could help you find a leather jacket.”

Then he looked angry and terrified and dumbfounded. He lowered his head, and his shoulders tensed, and Garen felt that something was wrong with it.

“Darius, are you…”

_Crying?_

But he couldn’t finish the sentence out loud, because he unconsciously understood that it would taken at offense, that this was disgraceful, that tears were a sign of weakness and nothing else, especially since they had been brought on by something that was, at least on the surface, so trivial.

“This is…” Darius began, his voice quavering. Then he slammed his fist against the mattress and it became gruff and angry. “Pathetic. Fucking goddamn-”

“Not pathetic,” he said, reaching over to grab Darius’s wrist before he could slam his fist down again.

“Let go of me.”

“Not until you sit up and look at me, Darius, look-” Darius fought against him with full force, to pull away and leave, but Garen fought back. “There’s nothing to be ashamed of! Look at me and I’ll prove it to you, Darius. _Stop it!_ ”

He wasn’t sure what miracle brought an end to the struggle, what caused Darius to stop yanking and roaring and resign himself to his fate, sitting there silently with his wrists gripped white in Garen’s hands. His eyes were cinched closed as though it would hide the moisture that had already tainted his cheeks.

“Look,” Garen said.

Another miracle caused his eyes to slowly open, and they were full of fear. But that fear faded the longer he stared. His pupils relaxed in one place and dilated. His snarl eased away. Garen let go of his wrists and held his hands instead.

“I love you,” he said. “And I’m not ashamed you. The furthest thing from it. Cry for as long as you need to and I won’t look away, because that doesn’t change the fact that I love you.”

But he had already stopped crying, and now he was the one to look away. Garen pulled him closer, down onto the bed, and they lay there together for a long time. He was sure that Darius had a million thoughts running through his head that he would never say, and though it frustrated him, he had to remind himself that he didn’t need to know what Darius was thinking to be there for him, to hold him, to love him. To prove that everything was okay, not just today but always. That past fears couldn’t taint the future forever; that it was possible for them to be happy together.

“Crying doesn’t make you weak,” Garen said. “It makes you human. And for that I’m glad.”

“I didn’t imagine… ever in my life… that I’d have someone like you.”

“Like what? Your knight in shining armor?”

He grinned cheesily, and Darius couldn’t help thinking it wasn’t far from the truth. No one had ever bothered to try for him, to be stubborn enough to stick around through all the hostility just to find the truth. No one had ever endured him, listened to him, loved him, or seen him cry, except Draven.

He was still the same person, with his temper and fighting spirit and cynical view of the world, but with one or two layers of loneliness peeled off that no one had ever bothered to acknowledge he had. No one except Garen, who claimed to love him and demonstrated all the evidence that he actually did.

“You wish,” he scoffed in reply.

“So, I’ll tell Lux to come pick you up?”

“I really don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“It’s either you meet my sister and let her do all the work for you, or you go out and search for clothes yourself. Trust me, she’s good.”

“I’ll do it only for you.”

“That’s a yes?”

He emitted a disapproving grunt before standing to get dressed, so Garen reached over to grab his phone from the bedside table, but when he got there he changed course to wrap his arms around Darius’s waist and pull him back onto his lap.

“I’m excited about this, you know,” Garen said. “Don’t show me your get-up until tomorrow.”

“We’re not-”

 _Getting married,_ he was going to say, but found himself slip at the thought, at the very fact that he considered it possible enough to think of in the first place. _No. That’s not going to happen._

It was hard to push the image out of his mind once it had materialized: the two of them at the altar together, then sprawled out on the patio of some honeymoon beach suite, wearing gaudy Hawaiian shirts. Walking into an empty apartment and wondering how they’d ever fill all that space. Coming home from some boring day job to a person who cared enough to ask how it went, rather than the empty silence and cold bed he had always imagined.

But he managed to push it out, because he couldn’t afford to believe in that possibility, especially after the scare that had happened just a week ago. Especially when everyone else he knew was in jail. He couldn’t hold onto one person, or his sanity would suffer.

For now, things were good. He could accept that. But more and more, he also had to accept that nothing good was permanent, even something as good as this. The fact that it even existed made it possible for him to appreciate it despite its impermanence, to bury the pain somewhere it wouldn’t fester.

He hated the possibility of impermanence, but he loved the feeling of these arms around his waist enough to make it worth it. And that was when he figured out the point of caring. The present. If the past was cruel, and he couldn’t count on the future, the present was all he had.

“We’re not what?” Garen queried.

“Nothing.”

“We’re not the greatest couple in the school? I disagree. I think we deserve a prize for how awesome we are.”

Darius elbowed him gently in the side, to make him let go. “You're full of shit.”

“You’ll see,” Garen said, laying spread-eagled back on the bed, stark naked. He crossed his arms behind his head, where they conveniently showed off their strength. His face was happy and naive.

By the time Darius had finished dressing and done his business in the restroom, he returned to see Garen’s head on its side and his mouth hanging open in a drowsy gape. Overall, he was almost back to regular functioning, except that he still slept through about half of every day.

He sat down at his desk and read.

Ten minutes later, there was a knock on the front door. Darius got up, kissed Garen’s forehead, and said, “I love you.”

Lux was about a foot shorter, with wide blue eyes (just like his), but he wasn’t sure whether they were normally that wide or if she was feeling extremely bewildered. Of course they had seen each other before, at the hospital and otherwise, but this was the first time they had actually talked one-on-one.

“Where’s Garen?” she asked excitedly, after the usual introductions.

“Asleep.”

“Oh. He texted me like ten minutes ago, so I thought… Anyway. How’s he doing? Everything okay?”

“He’s a lot better. Just sleeps a lot and has headaches.”

“What kind of headaches? Like… migraines?”

“No, just… regular headaches. He’s fine.”

“Okay,” Lux said, though she still seemed nervous, like she was holding back a plethora of other questions, only for Darius’s sake. “Okay. Well then, let’s go.”

She turned around and headed towards her car: a fairly new silver SUV. On the road, her questions for him never allowed there to be silence. She asked him about his major, his career plans, his hobbies and interests. She asked him how he and Garen had ended up in a relationship, which had a problematic answer, but thankfully he didn’t have to bullshit too much, since she started chattering about how often Garen used to complain about him. To that he felt a welling of pride, since back then he had never thought that Garen would bother thinking about him in _any_ sort of way. He had considered himself a face in the back of the crowd, which made it so much easier not to care about the way he acted. Turns out his actions had affected Garen after all, even then.

He remembered Garen saying he didn’t know how he’d live without him. His thumb brushed over the scar on his wrist and he imagined for the first time how Garen might have reacted if he had succeeded in his attempt. Draven wasn’t the only person he had a responsibility toward, now. He had to live. He had to go out today and buy a leather jacket because going to that stupid dance would make Garen smile. His parents weren’t there, but they never had been, anyway. Lately he’d been having trouble remembering his mother’s face.

Maybe if he’d had parents, things would have been different. Maybe he wouldn’t have that scar on his wrist, and whatever mental illnesses he had would be nonexistent rather than undiagnosed. Maybe he’d have friends who weren’t in jail, and friends he could actually confide in. Maybe his record would be clean.

Maybe he wouldn’t have ever met Garen.

It was strange to imagine that something good could have come out of being left on the orphanage doorstep. Strange, and jarring. He felt his thoughts becoming unsteady and stopped them right there, before the unsteadiness could bleed into his voice. He had cried enough for one week.

“Hey, leather can be expensive, and I don’t want you to have to worry about that. So today it’s on me, okay?” Lux said as she pulled into a parking space.

“I can't accept that.”

“You can, really. Just consider it Garen’s gift in return for going with him. Dances aren’t your thing, right?”

“Never been to one.”

“Really? Not even in high school?”

He thought that maybe the fact that he hadn’t gone to high school was a story for another day. “This will be the first.”

“Wow…” she replied as they walked inside, not in ridicule but in genuine wonder, since school dances, for her, had been such a natural part of growing up. “Well, you’re gonna have fun one way or another. The last time I saw Garen dance, it was ridiculous.”

“Ridiculous?”

“I mean, he’s not a bad dancer if he actually tries. The thing is, I think he’d rather make a fool of himself than become an object of public sex appeal. Maybe if you asked him in private, he’d do it for you.”

An image appeared of him easing his shirt up his muscular torso, rolling his hips to the bass, biting his lip with that cocky, _tempting_ grin, and all the blood traveled downwards. Shit. Now wasn’t the time.

Lux was already looking through the racks for him. “What’s your size?”

He made a mental note to contest it if Garen _did_ dance ridiculously in public.

Then he remembered all the people that would be around watching them, and forgot about the sex appeal, and wished that tomorrow would be over so that he didn’t have to suffer their derisive comments and glares.

Garen deserved better. He already knew that. It wouldn’t make it any less painful to have everyone confirm it. For Garen’s friends to approach them, one after another, and say, “You’re with _him?”_

He could trivialize the situation all he wanted by pointing out that it was just college, just a stupid social clique, but life was an endless playground of social cliques, and he didn’t fit into any one of them except the frowned upon.

He had to go, because Garen’s mind was set on it. But it made him sick to think that Garen might regret it in the end.


	13. Chapter 13

They walked through the entryway onto a floor checkered black and white, with pink spotlights illuminating the gloom. The hall was covered in tables and chairs straight out of a 50s diner, with a dancefloor in the center and an elevated stage in back. On either side of the entryway were the punch table and the bar, which was part of the venue but wasn’t serving. Darius thought the entire thing looked fucking ridiculous.

The first one to notice them was Vi, clad in white vest and gold tie, arm laid out on the back of her seat as she observed all the promgoers. “What are _they_ doing here together?”

“I dunno, love. Maybe they’re waiting to duke it out at the dance battle,” Caitlyn replied, crossing her legs. “I _told_ you to go with the theme this year. Even Darius looks pretty hot in leather. Imagine if it were you.”

“C’mon, Cait, don’t tease me like that.”

“You brought it upon yourself for being so stubborn.”

Vi wrapped her arm around Caitlyn’s waist and pulled her, seat and all, right up next to her. Caitlyn didn’t react. “I really wanted an excuse to wear this getup.”

“You should have just worn it at home.”

“I’ll pick up a leather jacket and wear it tomorrow, just for you. How does that sound?”

Caitlyn met her eyes with a smile. “Fine. How about a dance?”

“Let’s do it.”

On the other side of the floor, Garen met his sister at the punch table. He was dressed in impeccably ironed khakis and a white polo, with a baby blue sweater tied around his neck. She was dressed in a polka dot blue halter dress with a white belt around her waist. Behind them, Darius had his hair greased and his leather jacket on, and he was pouring vodka into his punch.

“You guys look _so_ cute,” Lux gushed. She had no date, since Jayce had turned out to be a player, but that wouldn’t stop her from enjoying herself tonight. “How are you feeling?”

“Much better. Stay safe tonight, Lux. Watch your drinks if you go to an afterparty.”

“I know, I know. I don’t plan on drinking much. Janna and I are gonna tear up the dance floor.” She shimmied humorously. “You guys have fun too, okay? I’m gonna go join her before we get lost.”

She bounced away and disappeared into the crowd. He turned to Darius, whose sneer expressed an unshakeable desire to be anywhere but here, and coupled with the greaser getup it just made him all the more fucking irresistible.

“She’s right, you know,” Garen said.

“About what?”

“You look more than just cute.”

“Yeah, well you’re the only one who thinks so.”

“You shouldn’t think that way.”

At that, Darius directed his glare towards Garen - his natural reaction to being told what to do, regardless of the context. “Why shouldn’t I?”

But by now Garen knew better than to let it affect him, and instead he stood in front of Darius and kissed his cheek and looked at him like he was the most brilliant thing in the room, which, to Garen, he was. “Because it’s not true.”

It was hard for Darius not to multiply every pair of eyes he caught staring at him hypothetically by three, and even harder to interpret those stares as anything but judgmental. But the fact that Garen would kiss him in front of all those eyes made it just a little easier to ignore them.

It was the first time they had appeared in public as anything but enemies, or acquaintances, at best, and surely it wouldn’t be immediately obvious to their classmates that they were a pair until public displays of affection proved it.

The song ended and a spotlight lit up the microphone at the front of the stage. The student council president appeared there and started meting out all the typical affectations regarding the school year so far.

“Could we sit at the bar?” Darius asked, tuning her out.

“Sure.”

The student council president was introducing the prom court, which had yet to be revealed until tonight. It was difficult to listen over the chatter of some girls who had approached the bar at the same time as them.

“It _has_ to be Jarvan,” one of them was saying.

“Why him? He’s so typical.”

“Well, who did you vote for, then?”

“I voted for Draven.”

“Oh, come on. That guy’s slept with half the girls in the school. Don’t tell me you’ve been-”

Darius stood up to confront them. “Excuse me?”

“Garen Crownguard,” said the voice on the loudspeaker, and whatever Darius had been about to follow up with was promptly forgotten as he turned back around. Maybe it was for the better; throwing punches in a place like this was a recipe for expulsion.

“ _You_ got nominated?” he said, in a haughty tone not because he didn’t think Garen deserved it - in fact, he deserved it more than anyone in the room - but because it meant that all these people would be looking at him, admiring him, adoring him once he had that crown atop his head.

He was about to ask if they could leave when Garen stood up, shrugging his shoulders as though he had just gotten lucky, that this could happen to anyone. Then he walked away and appeared onstage twenty seconds later, greeted with cheers and catcalls that never seemed to end.

He was the Prince, and they were about to announce the Princess, and all Darius could think about was how he wanted to kill her, whoever she was, for getting the undeserved chance to stand up there with him. He wanted to burn out the eyes of every person in the crowd who looked up there at Garen and fell in love with his smile, or wondered what he looked like underneath those stupid clothes-

The student council president called Darius’s name. She had to call it multiple times before he could process the fact that she had mentioned there being two princes this year, him being the second. After they had waited several moments for him to come up, Garen took the mic and said, “If you don’t come up here, I’m going to find you and carry you here.”

The crowd met the comment with laughs and a dozen more whistles. Darius met it with stark terror that dried his mouth and froze his limbs.

He hadn’t noticed Quinn sitting on his other side at the bar until she patted him on the shoulder and said, “Hey, you should go up. It sounds like he really wants you to.”

If he weren’t so beside himself, he would have told her immediately to fuck off. Instead, he asked, “Why the fuck is this happening?”

“Probably because he likes you? I don’t know. I saw that kiss earlier, and it looked pretty genuine to me.”

Just as Garen was getting ready to walk off the stage, Darius forced himself to stand up and make the trek, feeling every pair of eyes bore into him now like lasers.

This didn’t make sense. He wasn’t female, and nobody would have voted for him, anyways. It had to be some sort of fluke - or worse, a prank. Like the end of _Carrie_.

“I love you,” Garen said when he took the stage, and it was just for his ears, but the kiss that followed was a spectacle meant for everyone.

Darius held onto the warmth of the hands at his cheeks and disappeared for a moment into a much more comfortable, more private place. Onto the couch in his cluttered apartment living room, falling in love with Garen for the first time, though he never could have known it back then. In the shadows at the back of the bar, blood tainted with alcohol, kissing him despite the turmoil in his heart. On his back, feeling for the first time the sensation of a lover who will still be there the next morning, and the next.

Onstage, in front of hundreds of people who knew him as nothing more than the school douchebag, Garen kissed him and the roar was deafening.

The student council president placed a crown atop Darius’s head, but he couldn’t hear what she was saying; the only thing he could focus on was trying not to look out there and catch the eyes of those in the crowd.

Jarvan and Shyvana were elected King and Queen, but he hardly noticed until, eons later, Garen patted his back, signalling that it was time for them to leave the stage.

On the steps, he asked, “Could we please leave?”

Garen must have finally noticed the panic in his eyes, because he walked in front of Darius, politely waving off every person who tried to ask him questions on the way out.

Even the fresh air felt like a hundred degrees. Darius took the leather jacket off and laid it atop his truck once they got there.

“Are you okay?”

“What the fuck was that?!”

“I… I don’t know, I thought-”

“Just fucking distract me for a moment.”

“What?”

Darius wasn’t in any mood to elucidate, but somehow shooting a cold glare did the trick, because Garen pressed him against the side of the truck and kissed him.

“You know, someone’s probably watching us here, too,” he said quickly, failing to keep the prideful smile out of his voice, despite the situation.

“Is it so hard for people to mind their own goddamn business?”

“To be fair, it was a bit unexpected.”

“It shouldn’t be unexpected if I find whoever’s watching and break their fucking neck.”

“Darius, that’s…”

“What is it? Extreme? So was that fucking stunt you pulled in there.”

“I just wanted to prove it to you.”

“Prove what? What makes you think I want to get onstage in front of hundreds of people that hate me and have a fucking crown placed on my head?”

He was silent for a couple of moments, before stating glumly, “I didn’t think of it that way.”

“Of course you didn’t, because you can’t comprehend the concept of not being liked. Everything comes so easily to you.”

“I thought it would make things better… For you, I mean.”

Darius pushed him away, got into the driver’s seat, and started the engine. It seemed like he was going to take off without him, if only because he had tried to do so once before, but instead he blasted the AC and glared out the windshield, so Garen walked around and got in the passenger seat.

Again, to his surprise, the truck headed straight home instead of towards Garen’s own apartment. And he realized that a lot had changed since the time they had visited Noxon together - two boys in love, and one who wouldn’t believe it. Now, Darius believed, but that just opened them up to the whole wide world of so-called ‘typical’ relationship conflicts.

“How the fuck did I get nominated anyways?”

“Jarvan and I spread the word to vote you for Princess. Most people thought it was a joke, so it worked out.”

“Great fucking joke.”

When they arrived home, Darius went to his room and lay down without turning the lights on. The shine of the moon through the shutters made things barely visible. It felt quiet when Garen closed the door behind him, maybe in comparison to the cacophony of the prom.

He lay next to him, not touching him, just waiting. Darius hadn’t bothered undressing or getting under the covers, which meant that he had something to say. He had let Garen come home with him, but that didn’t mean the problem was solved. It meant that he cared enough now to _want_ to solve it instead of just giving up.

“I don’t need to be fixed,” he said. “I’m fine with the way things are. If I wanted a change, I would make it.”

“It’s not you I was trying to change. It’s them, for judging you.”

“You used yourself as an excuse for them to like me,” he retorted. “I don’t need that. If anyone’s going to change their opinion about me, they can do it of their own accord. Otherwise I don’t give a shit.”

There was a minute of silence before Garen said, “You’re right.”

“I don’t need everyone to like me. Just you is enough.”

Garen sighed, and then smiled, pressing himself closer. “What if I wanted to kiss you in front of everyone?”

“Then I wish you would have asked me first.”

“Alright,” he said, gracing the skin beneath Darius’s ear with a kiss, and Darius could hear the smile in his voice. “I will next time.”

Darius thought to himself that he should have still been angry. He was angry. But beside him was this bundle of warmth that felt like sunshine and smelled like home, and every second he spent in contact with it seemed to have a healing effect. He couldn’t be angry when he remembered just how cold this bed used to be.

“Garen,” he said.

“Yes?”

“Thank you.”

There was a confused pause. “I thought I had messed up tonight.”

“You did. That doesn’t negate everything else you’ve done for me.”

Darius turned on his side and nuzzled his face lower, where he could hide the fact that he felt like crying again. Because every time he felt happy, the first thing he thought of was the fact that it could be taken away. That one day he might have to get in bed alone with his thoughts and try to remember what the sunshine felt like beside him.

For the first time he thought that he would much rather have had it and had it taken away than to have stayed alone forever. Alone, and cold, and blind to the fact that happiness existed. It was hard to find, but it was around. It had been right in front of his eyes for a year and a half before he had found it, only because he had shut the world out so effectively.

“Does that mean the night isn’t over?” Garen asked, a playful lilt in his voice. He slipped his hand beneath Darius’s shirt, upwards and then back down, to where his fingers rested inside the waistband of his jeans.

“I’m not sure about that.”

“At least let me undress you,” he argued, pushing the jeans lower, over the curve of Darius’s ass. “You know, so you can sleep.”

Darius didn’t plan on having sex tonight, even if Garen proceeded to undress him, so he allowed it. He should have known better when _Garen_ inched downward along with his jeans.

“What are you doing?” he asked. Try as he might to deny it, the mouth enveloping his limp dick had succeeded in adding an edge to his voice that wasn’t usually there.

“Just…” Garen muttered, pulling back just enough to speak, though his lips tickled as they moved. “Making you comfortable. Any requests?”

“How about…”

He was about to say ‘stop’, but with his bloodstream redirecting downwards, he changed his mind just in time.

“Yes?” Garen muttered, a smile in his voice. He lowered his head and got to work, his hands on Darius’s hips to keep him from moving.

A minute later, Darius said, “I want you bent over my desk. Now.”

Without a word, Garen withdrew, stood up, and shed his clothing. He turned his head and smiled just in time to be slammed against the desk in the corner. He braced himself on his forearms, cock pressed painfully against cold wood, refusing to relent further even as a hand on the back of his neck forced his head down. Darius shoved two slick fingers in as far as they would go and started pumping. It wasn’t long before his shaft took their place, and he waited as Garen’s back tensed and relaxed, as he let out a sound that was half moan, half gasp.

He waited only long enough for that sound to drift off of Garen’s lips before continuing, so that more would take its place, and louder. The heat constricting his cock seemed to send his mind into a feverish haze, as well. There was nothing to see in the dark - only pleasure to feel, as he thrusted again and again, relishing those beautiful groans. His fingers dug into Garen’s side as he climaxed, his thoughts obscuring for several euphoric seconds, and slowly returning to clarity as he slowed to a stop.

“Did you cum on my desk?” Darius asked.

“No,” Garen breathed, though his precum pooled the surface. His cock throbbed against the wood still, so painfully now that he thought he could _hear_ it.

“How do you want to finish?”

He raised himself up from his forearms then, though his hands remained on the desk; he didn’t touch himself. “Inside you.”

Darius pulled out of him, dropped his jeans, and lay back on the bed as Garen crawled over him, lube in hand.

“It’ll be quick,” Garen said, slipping his fingers inside without much ceremony. Darius received them with a provocative grunt.

“It doesn’t have to be.”

“You pushed me to the brink already, sweetheart,” Garen replied, two fingers in and trying his best not to be impatient. “So it will be.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“What would you prefer?”

“That you moan my name-” He groaned again as Garen pushed inside. “Loud enough for everyone at the goddamn prom to hear you.”

So he did, thrusting and moaning for the next two minutes so loudly that his throat felt dry when he finally collapsed. He fell asleep right away, as he always did after good sex.

Darius watched the triangle of his face that was illuminated by the moonlight - the parted lips, the pale skin, the strong jaw - and silently thanked him for being there. He thanked whatever stroke of chance had led them here, after all the antagonism, all the misfortunes, all the differences that should have pushed them so far away from each other they’d never be found again.

He reminded himself that he didn’t believe in chance. All his life he’d gone on claiming that shit happened because the world was a shitty place, and no matter how you fashioned your own little bubble of life, you’d eventually have to look past that transparent film and see the world for what it was as a whole. No stroke of chance could change something that large.

Yet here Garen was, eclipsing the world and all its faults with an unshakeable sense of hope, and happiness. If one person could be so bright, then maybe there was hope for the world at large.

Darius wasn’t concerned with that anymore. He ran his fingers along Garen’s jaw, graced his lips and cheek with light kisses. He finally understood the meaning of the phrase, ‘You mean the world to me.’ 

* * *

 

The receptionist at the summer school office was testy and unwelcoming. Garen didn’t blame her for it; there were not enough workers here, and too many students with questions she couldn’t answer. Not only that, but the AC must have been out, because the only source of cooling in the office was a desk fan pointed towards the receptionist’s chair.

She asked Garen to wait a moment while she checked in with the back. He nodded and glanced around the office. Katarina was sitting cross-legged in a chair against the wall behind him, fanning herself with a summer school brochure. She must have been watching him the entire time, though she glanced away when their eyes met. Strange. She was supposed to be in jail.

“There’s no way for us to help you,” the receptionist said when she returned. “You need to go to your counselor and ask them for course authorization.”

“I see. Thank you.”

“Mhm.”

He turned around and sat next to Katarina, who was already prepared to scoff, “You got business with me, pal?”

“I was wondering how you’re here. After the incident in-”

“My parents bailed us out. They’re still in and trying to work something out with their lawyers, but they paid for my siblings and I right away, since our educations are apparently important. So I’m here signing up for the classes I missed.”

“That’s good to hear.”

“You should be grateful your boyfriend didn’t come, or he’d be behind bars with everyone else.”

“Believe me, I am.”

“Let me ask you something,” she said, finally directing her stare from the receptionist to him. “You really love him?”

“With all my heart.”

“Why?”

Garen smiled in annoyance, because he had been asked this kind of question a number of times since the prom, and he didn’t think it was a question that anyone had the right to ask.

“What other reason is there than I do? Some people come into your life and make you happy for a small length of time. Others change everything. Others become a part of you that you couldn’t leave behind if you tried.”

He stared at her pointedly. If his parents had not trained him vigorously in etiquette, he might have added, ‘Don’t tell me you’re jealous.’

“Well, I’m sorry I couldn’t change everything for you,” she answered, venom in her voice, as though it would hide the fact that she cared about what had happened between them.

“I’m just glad we’re speaking again.”

“Y’know, he was only part of the club because he wanted something to believe in. Then he met you.”

Garen decided he was done with this conversation, since she was just finding different ways to insult him indirectly. He stood up and began to take his leave.

“He believed in you more than he believed in our cause. So as far as I’m concerned, you’re both traitors.”

As far as _Garen_ was concerned, he had never been a part of the cause in the first place, so he couldn’t be labelled a traitor. He also knew that Darius had legitimate issues with the current government; maybe they just weren’t important enough to make him risk twenty years in prison when someone he loved needed him to be around.

In any case, Katarina had a temper which came and went like the summer winds. Garen predicted that he would see her and Darius talking again within the month. That was a good thing. She could fill him in on what he’d missed, and be there for him in some way or another.

“Nice to see you too, Katarina,” he remarked, departing with a friendly smile. 

* * *

 

That summer they decided to visit Garen’s hometown. Like the visit to Noxon, except that Demascus was a richer and much more peaceful town. There were no alleys for the homeless to sleep in - only clean streets and perfectly trimmed lawns. Parks filled with children and dog walkers, schools without fences. Lots of white folk who owned million dollar houses but were never home, like Garen’s parents.

They toured Garen’s high school and all his old haunts, lending Darius a well-meaning walkthrough of what it’s like to be a regular teenager. Late breakfasts and bike rides to school. Easy assignments. Notes passed in class. Kisses for that special someone after winning the football game.

The tour concluded at a cliff which overlooked the entire town and the ocean beyond. This spot was famous for first dates and after-prom getaways. It was a typical scene in a romance movie. In real life there was no music rolling, and the lines were sloppy, but the view was just as nice.

Darius was pressed up against the railing, looking out. He wasn’t wearing a sundress, like Garen’s high school girlfriend all those years ago, but frayed jean shorts and a black shirt advertising some indie band he didn’t recognize. His arms and calves were tan, outlined in gold by the sunset. He had his hands in his pockets. Unlike that time all those years ago, Garen thought that he could be satisfied with this view for the rest of his life.

“What the hell were you thinking?” Darius asked calmly. There was no snark in his voice, only honest curiosity. “That time after Christmas, when I knelt between your legs the first time.”

“I don’t remember. Probably something about my reputation.” He glanced downward, and then at Darius with a smile. “Now’s not the time to imagine it. This is technically a public area.”

“It seems like you don’t care about your reputation anymore.”

“I do. But the thoughts of hundreds seem insignificant compared to the thoughts of the one.”

“You get that out of a bad romance novel?”

“A good one, if anything.” He placed his hands on the railing and puffed his shoulders up as though he had something really important to say. “Anyway, I’m more mature now. Have Draven tell the whole school I sucked your dick last night. See if I care!”

“Funny thing is, they already know.”

“But nobody thinks about it. Except… One girl in our class asked if you were hung.”

“What’d you say?”

“Like a horse.” Darius punched him. “Kidding. I winked, so I think she got the picture.”

“If anyone asked me that about you I’d probably bash their face in.”

“I mean, regardless of whether or not you tell them, people will use their imaginations. But I appreciate your concern.”

“If you were to die during that operation,” Darius said. “I wouldn’t want people to remember you by the size of your dick.”

Garen was not entirely surprised by the sudden change in subject. Darius hadn’t mentioned the operation directly since it had happened, but it hung around their conversations like a dark cloud. It was something they needed to talk about before it could disappear. The storm before the sunshine.

“Some people would remember you for being good-looking or whatever else,” Darius continued. “They don't know how important you are. They shouldn’t have the right to even think about you.”

“But they will, and you can’t stop it. You can’t say that your perception of me is the only correct one, because there’s no way to judge. People live and die. Others remember them. Soon enough, they die too, and the world forgets.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about.”

“You’re talking about how people think of others. How they remember them. But memory is just a concept. It’s not real. The only things you can know for certain are the things that are happening here and now.”

“So if you were to die, you wouldn’t be real anymore.”

“If I were to die, I wouldn’t be here anymore.” He glanced over to watch for a reaction. “Just like your parents. Not that they’re dead, but that they’re not here and you can’t expect them to be.”

Nothing. Not a wince, or a fit of anger. Maybe he really had moved on.

“I love you, Darius. I want you to be happy regardless of what happens for the rest of our lives.”

“If you die, I’ll just remember that you’re not real and never existed.”

The statement was sarcastic, but not entirely angry. Garen smiled.

He stood there beside Darius at the railing and watched the townspeople, like ants, traverse the streets below. Probably a lot of them were people he knew from high school, now business owners, doctors, lawyers, spouses, parents - since it was easy to jump into a life like that when you had everything laid out for you on a silver platter.

That didn’t mean they were happy. Some of them might visit this spot and look down for a different reason.

He glanced over at Darius, who was looking out beyond the city, squinting in the light. Contemplating the golden horizon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's it, folks. The end of my ramblings. You can move on with your lives now.
> 
> In all seriousness, thank you all so, so much for reading. I'd be happy to hear any comments, critiques, complaints... anything you have to say about this story, really. I'm curious to know what you guys got out of it, other than MANY HOURS OF PAIN IN THE SHIPPING HELL THAT HAS CONSUMED US ALL. Ahem.
> 
> One more thing, and this goes for all of you! Feel free to add me on Skype (shattered.time) and ramble with me about anything that's on your mind!!! I'm a lonely hermit who would love to be friends with all of you. Let me love you, pls. <3
> 
> I'm also open to hearing any prompts/pairings/suggestions for a new fic. I'd love you forever if you've got a critical eye and want to beta read for me. Uhhh I think that's all I have to say for now.
> 
> Thank you all so, so much. I appreciate every one of you.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Fanart for A Stand Against the General Opinion](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6858859) by [deruzard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/deruzard/pseuds/deruzard)




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